Disorienting Lens of Life

It's not that hard to enjoy life if you look at it in bits and pieces. Something as simple as helping a child understand how to add fractions, so simplistic, and yet so satisfying. Maybe there's something in that about helping another human being, making another light-bulb go off in someone's head. But either way, it really is a beautiful feeling when an idea finally clicks in a child's mind. And that's how an hour of my afternoon was spent today, watching a little girl working through her homework, seeing the numbers fall in order onto the page from the tip of her pencil and the smile widen on her face when I told her she did it correctly.

I'm not sure what it is about tutoring that makes me enjoy it as much as I do. I like it though, it's a break from my own problems in life, and a chance to help somebody deal with theirs. Every time, the hour just goes by, and I'm left smiling at the end. But somehow, when I walk out of the building, I am forced to shut my eyes and press back tears. It makes no sense. I was so happy five minutes ago, smiling as I said goodbye to my pupil, and now I walk back trying not to cry.

It might be the weather, the cold and crisp nights that signal winter's approach. Or it might be the sudden emptiness of being without a human companion for the first time in an hour or two. But the wave of pure sorrow, that need to cry, that just washes over me as I walk out of the building, is astounding. It's powerful, it's chaotic, it's confusing. In that way, it's also beautiful. The sheer capacity of emotions to thus affect us, to completely switch over our mood from one minute to the next never fails to impress me, even as that wave breaks in my mind and I shut my eyes against the encroaching tears.

Thus is life, the disorienting lens through which we all see. Even if there is an objective reality, and set truths, we don't see any of it because our vision is constantly clouded by these emotions, be they from a cause we are aware of or seemingly out of nowhere. This barrier which life places between us and the world, the frosted glass that hides objectivity perpetually from our grasp, serves to separate us from more pain...and perhaps at the same time from more joy. Yet it is a barrier that opens up the imagination to wonder what lies beyond, encouraging the mind to find a freedom it would not otherwise have known.