The broken glass.
(Originally written February 26, 2023)
I went out to get myself some food yesterday. I’ve been in a funk lately, so I wanted to treat myself a bit. I pick a table in front of the window, and eat in silence. The food is good. It’s a chickpea sandwich and the sourness of the balsamic goes perfect with the smooth texture of the chickpea mash and avocado. The bread is toasted just right and it’s a really good and healthy meal.
A man walks by, clearly angry. I catch him out of the corner of my eye as he mumbles something Indiscernible followed by “motherfucker”. He doubles back around and stands square towards me on the other side of the glass. I see the rage in his eyes as he winds up and then… BOOM! There’s a loud crash as he punches through the window pane I am sitting in front of.
The glass is annealed glass, so it breaks into large dangerous shards as it comes crashing down onto the table I’m sitting at. I hardly react. I didn’t really feel anything. I suffer a small laceration on the index finger of my left hand but other than that, I’m unscathed.
I don’t know. It was interesting I guess. Unsettling, but par for the course of how I have been in the world lately - or how the world has been to me. It’s hard for me to tell. It’s very visceral, that vision of looking into his eyes as he punched the glass and the sound of glass crashing all around me. Why did he hate me so much? Was I just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Would he have done that anyways, or did I do something to trigger it?
There are questions in life that we don’t get to know the answer to. It just makes me think about things. Our presence in the world and lives of others…
It’s odd how we choose what to pursue. How a lot of people school together towards the same things. Like money and power. Very tangible and easy to see things… There is a quote from Horace Walpole that goes, “Life is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel.” And I feel that it is only true in the case of certain people only thinking and other people only feeling. A person who thinks may gain the upper hand, but the person who feels is more human in my eyes. A person who can think of how others feel will be a great servant, and a great leader.
It’s important to both think and to feel in our lives. I tend to place more importance on feeling. In today’s world, that isn’t always the best way to see things. But I don’t mind. Nikola Tesla once said, “The day that science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of existence.” And I hope that is true. There needs to be more importance placed on the things we feel and cannot see.
There have been studies that show that at the moment of death there is a minute amount of weight lost. Which can be theorized to be the “soul”. There have also been studies on telekinesis, where participants have been able to influence a point by the smallest degree of movement just by focusing their mind on it.
Obviously I’m getting into the “woo” subjects and I may have lost some of you. But tying it back in - I do not think our existence was meant to be so logical all the time. I don’t believe that we were always meant to sit back and think and plan. It is no secret that our way of society today is different from our ancestors. All we have to do is look at Egypt to understand that we don’t have all the answers. But I think that most of us would like to think we do — which is unsettling.
Food for thought I guess. I hope you’ve had a good week. I hope that the world has treated you well. Thanks for reading.
As always,
Stay warm.
dc
