Mon, Jan 21
... Someday, I'll be able to see
He nodded, looking solemn. "So maybe there's a planet somewhere where nobody has any eyes."I looked at him, and I thought his own eyes were shadowed, and I wanted to hug him and pull him onto my lap the way I sometimes did when he was little. But he was sounding as though he felt very grown up. "Could be, I guess."
"Well, if nobody has any eyes, they'd all get along all right without them, wouldn't they?"
"Sure, I guess they'd compensate."
"They'd get along with hearing, and smell, and touch, but they wouldn't have any idea what anything looked like."
I wasn't sure what he was driving at, but I knew that it was important to him. "No, they wouldn't."
"And if someone from our planet went to the planet whre no one had eyes, and tried to describe something to them--the way the light looks falling on the ocean, or the lighthouse beam at night, or the sunrise--it couldn't be done, could it?" He sounded anxious.
I tried to understand. "No. It just wouldn't be possible. If you didn't have eyes, if you lived in a world of touch and sound, then nobody could tell you what anything looks like. Why, Rob?"
He pulled up another ottoman and sat, elbows on knees, chin in hands. "Well, maybe when the people on the planet with no eyes die, then maybe they get sent to planets where there are eyes. But you couldn't tell them about it ahead of time."
"That's right."
"So, maybe when we die, we'll get something as important as sight, but because we don't know what it is, nobody could tell us about it now, any more than we could explain sight to the people on a planet with no eyes."
A Ring of Endless Light, Madeleine L'Engle
Just a thought. I don't think I could put it any better than that. Besides, I can't think right now. I have nothing left to say.
infinite || abyss
posted at 8:51 p.m.
