Uncertainty

The more I learn, the less I know - at least, the less I know for sure. Nowadays, it seems as though I don't have a firm opinion on anything. Thanks to the analytical skills that have been ingrained into my mind, everything is gray for me. That beautiful, childish black and white is no longer separated by a nice, straight line anymore. Everything is nuanced; all that varies are the shades of gray in my mind. I'm not sure about anything anymore. I see good and bad in everything; beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow, steady and weak - they're all ambiguous.

I envy those who can firmly argument anything for extended amounts of time. Even as I try to make my point, arguments in favour of the opposite opinion pop into my mind, unbidden and unwanted, yet relentless. By the end of a debate, I can't stop mulling over what my own actual opinion is. While everyone else around me is bickering bitterly, my head swings side to side, nodding now at one, then at the other. Am I really that easily influenceable? The thought saddens and worries me.

Once in awhile, though, I'll see the light. That one stray ray of brightness - almost white in its certainty. Like a flash, it comes and goes before I can even register what has happened. Those moments - those moments of absolute, wonderful certainty - that's when I feel the adrenaline rush, the shift of an out-of-focus world righting itself, the sense of peace. My eyes open wide, both literally and figuratively. I suddenly know - I do have an opinion. No longer is a shadow cast over light, or light shone into dark. Everything looks crisper, cleaner, clearer. I can make judgement and stand by those decisions.

But these moments are short-lived. With dread, I sink back into doubt, into that disgusting gray.

Truly... growing up is growing gray. In more ways than one.

No tildes for this post. Tildes suggest a certain lightness. Uncertainty is too dark for that.

Sight

Ah, sight. The sense that stands out the most. ~
Sight is the sense we use to detect light, brightness, and depth. With it, the world is thrown against us in all its glorious colour. ~
Eyes have often been described as windows into the soul. However, it is just as true to say that eyes are the windows we peek through to see into the souls of others. ~ Through these openings, we look to receive. ~ Yet compared to the eyes of a hawk, or those of an owl, our eyes are very pitiful indeed. ~
Another aspect to consider is how much trust we put into our vision. ~ To see is to believe, some say. But what of all the technological marvels our world is now conceiving? Can we really take for granted that everything our eyes see is real? ~ Furthermore, what of perception? How do we know that what our eyes capture is what is seen by everyone else as well? ~ Ever thought about how much verbal communication can hinder our true message? What we truly want to express might be an image. How can we convey that through simple words? ~
Light. A myriad of all the colours imaginable, all rolled into one bundle to produce pure white light. ~ How we see colour is another miracle. The colours that strike our eyes are actually those that are reflected off of an object. All other colours are absorbed into the object. ~ Take a red clip, for example. The clip absorbs white light, keeping every colour except for red, which it rejects. How ironic that the colour the object seems to dislike the most is what ends up qualifying it. ~ Then again, who's to say that the object isn't reflecting its favourite colour because of its selflessness, wanting to show the world the beauty of that one shade? ~
Black. ~ When something appears as black, it means that object has absorbed every single colour and is not reflecting back anything. ~ How selfish of that object, wanting to keep all of the colours of the rainbow to itself. ~ In the end, black remains a mature, mysterious shade because it is hiding its true colours. ~
So vision, in the end, is a trickster. Perhaps, we see what we want to see. Maybe our eyes shield us from the worst? Or is it our minds who are not accepting the images our brave little windows are shining at us? ~ Another mystery, best left unsolved. ~