A Pure Gaze

 It was an ordinary workday, during which nothing important or interesting happened. Or rather, something did happen, but it was only important to me. As usual, I walked around the shopping mall, sometimes sinking into my thoughts, sometimes trying not to think at all to rest from them. A couple with a stroller, holding a tiny infant, was walking toward me. As I passed them, I glanced at the baby for a second, looked into its eyes, and it was like a bolt of lightning struck me. Its gaze. It was so pure, so untainted, so unbiased. There was no pain, no joy, no regrets, no expectations, no courage, no fear—nothing in its eyes. It looked at the world with an all-encompassing gaze and saw things as they are. I only looked at it for a second, but that second was enough to plunge me into reflections that I’m now writing down.

What if we’re supposed to keep that gaze? I’ve already thought about how most people seem to have someone else’s gaze. They don’t try to be themselves; they try to be the people they look up to, convincing themselves that life really is as bad and unfair as they’ve been told. This is especially noticeable in people who think they’re tough street guys, like gangster-style. There’s hardly anything left of themselves in that image. They’re really cool, but only in how convincingly they deceive themselves. I believe that people who’ve managed to bring their gaze as close as possible to that child’s gaze are great people. I’m not talking about famous conquerors or politicians—I’d say they’re great players. I’m talking about people who’ve truly grasped the wisdom of this world. I think that’s why they say children are little adults, and most adults are just big children.
From childhood, we’re fed other people’s opinions, rules, and stereotypes. We believe them because they come from the people closest to us, whom we trust completely. They don’t do it on purpose; they’re just trying to pass on their experience so we can protect ourselves the way they think we should, from the things they fear—and their fears get passed on to us too. We start living in other people’s worlds, replacing our unbiased perspective with their expectations. I recently saw a video where some guy tracks down dangerous animals and just plays with them. He calmly dips his feet into a moat with crocodiles, pets them, playfully kicks them. He catches poisonous toads and snakes with his hands, big snakes like pythons and anacondas, steps into anthills with huge ants, lets various spiders crawl on his skin—and nothing bites or tries to kill him. So why isn’t he afraid to do all this and still alive? Meanwhile, I’m scared to even get near a crocodile, though I’ve only seen one in a zoo, a small one, and never interacted with it. I have no personal bad experience with crocodiles, but I’ve seen them in movies plenty of times, portrayed as cold-blooded killing machines. Most of my fears aren’t my own experience.

How much information have I absorbed from other people? How small is my world, really? How many generations have people been deceiving themselves and their children? This deception only grows from generation to generation. We accept the worldview and rules invented by others, add something of our own, and then pass it on to our kids. A deception born of ignorance, fueled by ignorance, and we believe in it without asking extra questions. Why ask questions when everything’s already been explained? It’s easier that way—easier to just believe than to figure it out yourself. Misunderstanding stems from deception. When someone blindly believes in imposed convictions and meets another fool with different convictions, misunderstanding arises, and misunderstanding inevitably leads to conflict. Conflict escalates into slaughter, all for a deception born of ignorance. How many wars have there been, are there, and will there be for meaningless reasons? Territory, resources, people—they can’t be reasons for war because just as no person can belong to another, neither can land or resources. What right does a person have to claim land as theirs, only the right of force? And how will they manage it after death? They won’t, because they can’t take anything they gained here, not even their body, and the body is the only thing that might truly belong to us, and only while it’s alive. I believe that the earth doesn’t belong to us—we belong to the earth. All borders, all states are just the workings of greed and fear. A great desire to own something breeds an equally great fear of losing it. All these rules and laws with thousands of amendments, which clever lawyers playfully twist to their advantage, forgetting the true essence and meaning of justice. I think there should be few true laws—maybe those are the divine laws from the Bible, which I don’t even know because I’ve never been religious and never really cared about religion until now. I’m still surprised that when I started asking questions and seeking answers myself, I found similarities between my answers and what I always thought was nonsense and gibberish—religions. Human rules no longer interest me; I don’t want to take part in that. Play your games yourselves. From now on, I’ll seek only what matters to me and play my own game, the rightness of which I’ll confirm not with others’ opinions but with my own feelings and answers.