Stay Disinterested

Anyone that may be reading this, or my blog in general, is probably somewhat interested in what I have to say. Either that, or you're really bored. Just because I'm in a decent mood, I'm going to go with the former (also because it makes sense in this blog post).

Before I get into the meat of this blog post I just wanted to introduce a word many people probably are not familiar with. This word is 'disinterested'. Now this word does not mean 'to NOT be interested'. No, that is what UNinterested means. Disinterested is being unbiased. Looking at something with a fresh and clean perspective.

The idea of being disinterested is important, for it will help you find the truth in things. Bias can taint. Stay disinterested.

My love for rhetoric has me learning more about critical theory, and today I want to talk about a feature we all (hopefully) have: eyes.

I personally think eyes are amazing, I mean they let you see things. Even when you close your eyes, you can see things, in the form of dreams or even abstract and figurative truths. The physical eye itself is even quite beautiful. They can come in various colours, from a hazel brown to glassy periwinkle blue.

It is also commonly said that the eyes are the gateways to truth. Our own eyes can define us, or share something about us. When someone is happy, our eyes are bright, they light up, are bigger, we keep them open. When we are sad or upset, they reflect this with tears. Even with anger, we put certain stress on our eyes which is evident to others (and the use their own eyes to see this!).

Not only this, but we can train our eyes to be able to read things. More than just books and words, but behaviour and mechanisms of others. We can see that habit of scratching ones hair as a sign of nervousness, or a twiddling of thumbs to imply boredom. Our eyes show us these, they show us the truth.

Moving back to the gate way of truths, that is quite a strong statement. The gate way of truth would imply that your eyes, are the gates, and store and encompass what we feel, our emotions, desires our identities. Why else do people ask others to look them in the eye when in a serious encounter? To measure how truthful they are being. Their is something in the eyes, that will hint something about us. Looking straight into the eyes of someone, is quite an experiment and experience. You could see a soft melancholic tinge or even a passionate excitement.

I'm particularly fascinated by eyes, not only for their beauty, but for that truth. I actually believe it, by looking someone in the eye, you can learn so much about them. By using your eyes, your trained eye, you can discover things. Much like in baseball, you use your eye to fend off the strikes from the balls. It shows you the goodness to swing for, and the badness to lay off of.

I was very recently having a conversation with a new friend, and they asked me to tell them more about myself, and this got me thinking (as usual). How much of myself can an my eye truly see? It can see others for who they are. For instance, if you were to look at me, you would be able to see me, literally for face value. Curly hair, short etc. How much you read me, would depend on how well you know me, your experiences with me. The more the better obviously. And all along this time, you would be able to see me.

Now if you were to look at yourself, it is impossible. You cannot truly see yourself in entirety. Even if you were to look into a mirror, it is only a reflection of yourself. Not only that, but it is a backwards image of yourself. You are looking at a reflected image. The actual definition of reflection is light or particles or something that is being thrown back at you. To put it into simpler terms (ironically using math), if you were to reflect a graph about an axis, you would be turning it upside down, it would be a backwards image of the original. Although it resembles the original, it is not truly the original. Therefore, it would be hard to argue that your reflected image in a mirror, is exactly you.

Now of course this may be subjective, however it does bring up an interesting point; how much of yourself do you truly know? We constantly struggle with the ideas of survival or identity, and we constantly battle between decisions to distinguish right from wrong, the best from the worst. When we apply these types of ideas to others, it becomes much simpler to read them. For instance, you as my reader are probably reading this because of the interest you have in my words. Perhaps you like the idea of taking my nuggets and thinking about them (or maybe you're just being nice to me). Regardless, their is some interest motive that keeps your eyes (oh look: eyes) on this page. Now if I were to ask myself why I am writing this, it would be a little more difficult to answer. I could probably come up with a decent and passable answer, but here is a better example.

Today, and actually over the past week, I have been asked, 'How do you do it?' To this question, I don't think I have an answer. Each time I was asked this question, the context was simple: I attend both university and act as a Teaching Assistant in high school. My schedule is seemingly packed with days ranging from 8 hours to 15 hours. Many times, I have been asked, how do I keep up? How do I stay on top of everything? My only logical explanation is because, well, I want to. Or perhaps I am crazy?

My point here is, really, how much do we understand ourselves, or what we really want? How many times do we look at others and find truth? Now this isn't a bad practice, but then I ask, how much do we appreciate the truth in others? How much do we look for the truth inside of ourselves? And I think this idea is important, we can understand others, but to truly be happy, we must also understand ourselves. Maybe we need the eyes of another to help us see ourselves, for instance our eyes would need the help of a telescope to properly see Saturn. Similarly, maybe we need a set of glasses and bowl of minute rice to really think about and look at ourselves.

Then again, we always have mirrors.