n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
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3 comments
Neat. I never realized that had a name.
Is there another name for when you then later realize that not everyone is as vividly aware as you are? Some people are very clearly barely self-aware, barely awake. Sometimes you can see in their faces, in their eyes, and hear in every word they speak… they’re not sure they’re not dreaming.
There is certainly some variance across the spectrum of human consciousness.
I’m not sure, but in some language, somewhere, there likely is.
You’re right about how unaware some are. It’s such a waste, in a way. They’re so accepting of what they’ve been taught by society that they don’t see beyond- can’t even comprehend that there is something beyond.
Wonderful, and that thought usually brings me a conciliating approach to my indifferent microscopic life.
I have another view, though, about awareness. I think it’s not an ability to be proud of, but a thing you have been given with the same credit as your nose, your hair – you know how would be silly to be proud of your aspect!
And really what we can see, and to an extent what we are, it’s beyond us.
AAnyway, if i could have chosen what to be, i wouldn’t certainly have picked this unsure nevrotic son of a ***** i am, so screw awareness.