Through the Eyes of Another

The mind is a strange thing, a mysterious thing, nothing is ever certain except the uncertainty of thought shaped by perception. The perception of ones own perspective and the perception of the perspectives of others as your own would tell you it is. To see through the eyes of another, such a thing may seem impossible, our own egos get in the way. Our own ego forces our perspective onto those we try to look through. How then do we free our minds from ourselves and fly free to see? Is it through dreams that we are free of ourselves when we are away from the reality and everything is as uncertain as the mind? Perhaps it is and if that be the case then let me tell of a dream I had of the world through the eyes of another.

I wake my body heavy, head spinning as I stare up at the dingy ceiling above, rising to see the mess around me and find it fitting. I amble and shamble my way through the shack to a rack of clothes. What squalor I live in but why bother? Not like I do anything but sleep here and all is in its place for my needs. To live in the squalor yet find comfort in the familiar setting and musk. Who am I? My name is not my own, my body not my own, my face not my own. Yet it was all my own now. I could see words staring at me from a screen, a challenge and insult refuting me, something that must be answered.

Now I sat calls coming in on many lines. Surrounded by machines like me, “Hello how can I help you?”, those words forming an endless cacophony about me. We are nothing but living machines here speaking by rote scripts laid out before us. We speak words barely hearing them or those we talk to, it has all become routine, and those around me don’t care they are just machines unlike me. I tell myself that just as they must surely think but they aren’t me they are just like everyone else except that one that I find infuriating.

The day was done and I walk my way home under the hot sun. Checking those messages and answering more words from others on a screen of colored lights. I return convinced people were jealous and plotting that I was sure as I was before. Was it for the sake of drama and the amusement of such that I made those accusations or is it what I truly believed? Perhaps I convince myself even and fooled myself to their obvious reactions and meanings.

My words change from day to day but the patterns of my actions remain the same. As do those of others I realize. The dream starting to fade. The same traps often ensnare everyone, from such common connections can we begin to understand them, these things that affect us all with no regard to our own ego. To see through the eyes of others and understand those things that are shared and where things are different. The lives of others can be incomprehensible but through brief glimpses can some understanding be gained. Those glimpses of shared events allow insight into those parts we can’t as easily understand. We might not ever understand all of someones life or the things they say or do but letting go and forgetting we can in part understand.