Perception of the World

When the world ends, it’s only your own.

We may all live on one planet in what seems like one world, but we each have our own. It is not one world that each of us perceives in different ways; it is each our worlds we build up – and tear down.

My world is incomplete. I haven’t built it all – there’s still so much to perceive; to judge; to value; to discard; to believe.

Most of the things we experience are transformed into beliefs and interpretations. We think we understand them, but really, we only interpret one side of it and believe that side to be true.

I think I understand friendships, but I only see one side of them.

I think I understand my decision, but I’m not even close.

I think I understand my emotions, but I don’t feel anything.

It’s all filled with opposites.

Life is filled with death. We always lose people around us, unable to control it or stop it or chose whose turn it is. It’s random. It’s ruthless. And in the end, it doesn’t matter. We all move on. We all accept it. A death is only a death until people accept it as being such.

Love is filled with indifference. Hate doesn’t matter; it’s the indifference that hurt us. The love makes us believe that nothing can, but then, it goes the other way and does what we believed was impossible. And then it dies. And we mourn. We mourn for as long as we find it relevant; as long as it’s still dead. And then one day, we accept it. And we move on, and then it doesn’t matter: It might have once – it might have been alive once – but when you’ve accepted its passing, it doesn’t.

Lies are filled with truths. Where there is a lie, there’s a truth we try to hide. Whether the lie is revealed or kept hidden – kept alive – it has a sense of truth behind it. White lies are said to matter less than lies we perceive as big – or dark. White lies are told to hide a painful truth; a truth that is better left untold, so that it won’t hurt the hearer. But then, why are dark lies told? Is it to hide painless truths? Or perhaps they are told to cause the pain; to avoid the painless ignorance and oblivion. Perhaps dark lies are meant to open your eyes and face the truth that wasn’t told. Does that make it better or worse than the truth?

It’s all filled with contradictions.

There’s always more than one side to everything. There’s more than one side even to our own, individual world. The problem is we’re the only one who sees that world. And in our worlds, other worlds don’t exist. In one’s own, relatively little, individual world, every other person is a bystander; an extra; a filler. No one will ever matter more than you. Even if you chose to end your life – your world – for the good of all others, you think about you; only you. If you end your world, you won’t have to live it; you won’t have to feel it; you won’t have to experience it. If you end your world, you don’t have to worry or care about others. This selfish act will only benefit you.

In our own worlds, we are selfish. We care about ourselves. Behind every action is a sense of gain. What can I gain from this? How can I make the outcome best possible for myself? What’s in it for me?

It doesn’t matter what action it is.

Philanthropy and charity are not selfless benevolences. If we do it without any physical gain, we do it for the psychological gain. We donate money to feel good. We donate our time to feel large. We’d donate anything, just to get that feeling of accomplishment; of pride; of gratification, which leads to arrogance.

In the end, we all simply generalize to make sense of the world in a selfish, egocentric, conceited fashion to convince ourselves that the world is not random, but comprehensible. We believe that the world is explicable, just as our lives and our actions.

I believe that these words make sense. I perceive them all to be truths. They’re my view of my world: my incomplete world.