Universe

I forgot who said this: “The center of the universe is you.” It is not important who said this, what is important is that there is truth in these words.

I’ve always wondered how it is to be in the other guy’s shoes. How to see things from the other guy’s perspective, I got into this thinking or should I say mood because I witness an interesting occurrence. It happened a few months ago at school, I saw a snatcher being beaten by the crowd. The guy was caught trying to run away with an old lady’s bag. He was caught; the people gathered around him; the beating started. The scene was surreal.

I have a tendency for violence. I don’t know. I’m so unlike my older brother, in fact, I’m so unlike my siblings. I admire them for their patience, their passivity in times of irritating times. They have this mechanism, which I think I lack, that calms them and prevents them from exploding, while me, I’m a walking explosive. I’m impulsive and they’re not. I don’t know, but my impulsiveness gets me into trouble. I think before I act but I don’t rethink my actions before acting. So, I was thinking how violence must be all about not thinking. Those people who beat the snatchers may have acted on impulse, and what is troubling is that some of the men who did the beating may not have done the beating to teach the snatcher a “lesson”, but what they may have beaten the snatcher to let go of all their frustrations in life; it’s like road rage. Kant said that when we do evil our reasoning failed—evil is irrationality. It’s true, who’d not do an evil thing lest he’s not nuts.

We are the center of the universe because we see things from our point of view. When I read about other people’s experience, I catch glimpses of how they perceive experiences but it’s only a glimpse. No one can really know anyone because no one can peek into other’s mind. It is the uniqueness of these experiences, how one see things, how I see things that make life lonely. Loneliness in a sense of not being alone or being lonely but the loneliness of being alone—experiencing things from your own experiences. It’s like looking at a cloud, ask someone if they see the images that you are seeing and you’ll instantly see what I mean—you have to tell that someone how to see what you are seeing so that someone can see what you are seeing. You have to tell how to see or else there will never be an agreement. It is this loneliness that makes me lonely because I know that the way I see things are different from the way other people see things--and I want them to see it my way-- but the difference is that they are not lonely at how they see things; it seems it is only I that feel this loneliness.

“The center of the universe is you.” We are the center of the universe because we see reality from our point of view. How the others see this reality is deprived from an individual and this individualism is loneliness. Empathy? Maybe that’s why people have always search for transcendence and unity being--one with the world. It’s lonely being alone, I mean not that alone.

How does it feel to be beaten? To see the universe from that perspective?

How does it feel to beat someone you don’t even know?

Different universe, different planet, different time, different era, different….unique and private—how I would give anything just to be in other people’s shoes and experience things from their perspective.