Don't try to just "see", try to "look". The sound of our voice, sometimes it's just a sound we hear and sometimes it's a story we tell unknowingly. It is our eyes that see however it is our mind which perceives. Do we ever realize when we've stopped looking and our eyes are just seeing.
He kept staring at the screen without a flicker of emotion, I on the other hand was disgusted at what was being shown. A helmet full of nails snapping shut with someone's head inside, the blood and gore would have put slaughter houses to shame, but he kept on looking simply because his wasn't even trying to understand what he was watching. It's amazing what happens when your brain doesn't co-ordinate with your mind, your vision is reduced to merely a hole in the wall, it's as good as not being there with no one to see through it. I couldn't blame him for being like that, when a man realizes that his eyes have only been "seeing" and not "looking" it comes as quite a shock. Rectifying it isn't easy either, when you are used to being blind, vision is like sunlight after 100 years of darkness.
"It's hard when you realize some truths about yourself, your heart doesn't want to accept the fact that your mind works the way it does", that's what he had told me once. Only a few familiar faces left in his life, I wondered what made him give up the "family and friends" he had grown up with. Is this what happens when a persons mind starts comprehending what one sees ? Is this how one reacts when he reaches an understanding of the environment around him. Is abandonment a consequence of the realization that nothing ever lasts. We sat together going through albums of his childhood, his parents, his childhood friends, I was looking at the history of a person, the foundation of a being while he just stared at pictures with people in it.
"He had been in love once, but he didn't know it. They had been together for six years but all he saw in her was everything he wanted to hate. It had been an off limit topic for me however the day he saw her pictures of getting engaged, he talked about her and all the things he loved about her. It was like his eyes had seen her a million years back and now his brain was registering all that he had felt.", his wife seemed to have a tremendous understanding of his emotions and a different kind of respect for him.
The experience of visiting a "long time no see" friend should always be one filled with joy however this was one visit which turned out to be something more. He hardly spoke to me but his wife told me that his acceptance of my "foreign" presence at his home is sign enough that he's happy to see me. When it was time for me to leave, he shook hands with a warm smile on his face and a gentle "do visit again".
As I drove back home I was filled with the dark realization that we are all blind at some level. Our perception of things around us are at times limited to the dimension of our vision and understanding. We see people, things & life as we can see them and we seem them with the best possible understanding we have developed. How do we know that the relation established between the vision before our eyes and the emotions evoked by our mind are right. We continue to live in this blindness, at times our entire life and at times we are shocked by a sudden connection that our brain makes, then we are jolted into a different reality one that has been overshadowed by the reality that runs in our minds. After 20 years of blindness this vision of reality can be an adjustment impossible to make however some survive and some just close their eyes.
Next time I heard myself say the words "Hi, it's good to see you !" the only question in my mind was "Can I really see you ?".
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