These Eyes

Sometimes I wish I had a magic wand and could just right things that had gone askew. Instead, like a bystander on a subway platform, I watch as the train batters in and out of the station. I can’t stop it. If it were running someone over, or leaving someone behind, I could do nothing about it.

Life is that way. We live alone, but with company. No one on earth could possibly know my experience. They can see parts of it but they can’t know it. Not even Chang and Eng Bunker could live each other’s experience, even though they were attached their whole lives.

There are 6 billion people living on this planet at the same time as I and yet I feel a deep well of loneliness. We are not family, even when related. We are a collection of 6 billion solitary human beings simultaneously experiencing something we call life. We can observe the external response of others but that is as deep as it gets. That makes for a lonely feeling, or sometimes a welcome sense of relief, as others seem to be having a more difficult time than I.

I'm sometimes distracted by what I observe and fool myself into believing that it's our experience. But it's not, and I always come back to this place of recognition that no one sees out of these eyes but me.