The Anti-Soapbox: Collected Essays Read online

seeing things differently, as to discover what was “hidden in plain sight.”

  This is but one example of the big, far-reaching changes that could result from successfully silencing influences lodged in the subconscious. People, places, practices, possibilities—all could be seen anew, once the eyes are cleared of their mental “static.” It could be likened to “seeing the world as a child,” before we were conditioned with distorted perceptions that bar us from the Now and lock us into some make-believe past or future, thus making us see what’s not there or ignore what is.

  In a nut, mental influence is a form of control, and silencing the mind is a means of breaking that control.

  As a closing note, I should mention that there is much more to the subject of silencing the mind than discussed in this condensed treatment. Besides the underlying psychology at play here (and what it means in the scheme of things), there is also the fact that silencing the mind within the confines of a dark, quiet bedroom is far different than doing so in the outside world. To carry that clear-thinking, nonreactive state with you, as to be impervious to the world’s many influences, is a true art, one which could fill a book (and perhaps a lifetime).

  XI. WINDOWS TO NOTHING: THE EYES LIE

  As conventional wisdom has it, the eyes are the proverbial “windows to the soul.” Yet, that same taproot declares that “appearances can be deceiving,” and “don’t judge books by their covers.” Contradiction ensues. Which side of this double-bind is right?

  In my experience, the eyes can lie.

  Growing up, I was a subscriber of “windows to the soul”—not that I was aware of this, exactly. I never gave it much thought, one way or another. Like most children (and some adults), I just went on how something made me feel, and that was that. If a particular set of eyes rubbed me wrong, then their owner was, in my book, at best suspect, and at worst a Hollywood-movie villain. So, if only because of my shallow reasoning, I would’ve agreed with the “windows to the soul” angle, where some quick, cursory eye contact would reveal all pertinent information about a person. So omniscient I was, like some Godly optometrist.

  Only as an adult would I begin to question the eye’s infallibility.

  Oh, how a single experience can destroy a lifelong notion, where even the loudest shouting fails. I had my driver’s license renewed, is what happened, and the picture came out badly. Whereas my original license, obtained the day after my eighteenth birthday, revealed a spry young lad with a calm, even gaze, my new license showed ... someone else. It wasn’t that the twenty-something me in the updated license was older or less presentable; instead, it was in the eyes: cold, glazed, faraway, they belonged to a madman or a jet-lagged traveler, staring off past the camera into a dark infinity. As it were, the eyes profiled in my new license were those of a Bad Guy plotting Bad Things, surely with a Bad Soul to match.

  But I wasn’t bad. How could my eyes suggest such falsehoods?

  The answer, like most in life, lay in the details—namely, the context of my visit to the Driver’s License office for the renewal. First, it was late in the day and I was more than a little tired. Second, I was in a busy public place, under influence of the cruel, vacant trance such spaces tend to induce. Third, the gentleman processing my case had, for whatever reason, left me uncomfortable (perhaps he, too, had untrustworthy eyes). And lastly, the office was minutes from closing and I was the day’s last client, a fact that my assigned worker had made clear, lending a sense of pressure and hurry to the encounter. In a word, I was stressed, a condition which shone through those “windows” of my eyes once the new license picture was, finally, taken.

  But did the stressed man depicted on my license really reflect my “soul,” or so much as anything worthwhile about me? The answer, in this case, is no, and upon opening my new license and seeing the horror of it, I would at last begin to doubt the eye’s credibility.

  A second experience cemented these doubts. This one also involved a photo of myself, but now to the other extreme: instead of a stressed madman, this photo showed a placid, easygoing fellow standing in a coolly lit room, gazing lovingly at the camera, a grandfatherly smile on his face—and serene, open eyes. Look into those eyes, and you’d trust me even if I held a bloody machete. However, as I studied this photo after the fact, it evoked that other adage I mentioned: “Appearances can be deceiving.” As for this picture’s context, it was taken just before bedtime on a night when I was under the influence of herbal sleep medicine. And that was the “soul” in my eyes at the time: a whopping dose of melatonin and valerian root, enough to put a caffeinated ape to rest (I suffer from chronic insomnia). So, much like my license picture, my bedtime-self’s “trustworthy” eyes were also misleading, now by dint of brain chemistry rather than the stress of a public institution.

  Most importantly, the second photo provided contrast, the destroyer of many an illusion. And that was all she wrote: the conflicting pictures demonstrated to me, firsthand, the emptiness of the “windows to the soul” doctrine, along with that of most conventional wisdom. Big truths lurk in the smallest of things, it would seem.

  I would, of course, come to decipher the soul-window fallacy further, as life went on and I was provided more experiences on which to refine my budding wisdom. Though, that’s not to say the phrase is completely untrue; it’s just simplified and clichéd to the point of distortion. Rather than being portholes into another’s heart and thoughts, the eyes are just one element of a person’s greater story, like a single chapter in a long book. Sure, maybe the eyes say something, but what that is, exactly, is hard to determine, for so much can alter the character of one’s eyes and face—what is seen in the “window,” as it were. That is, what information the eyes provide must be interpreted, no different than a language, and this is the key fact to be observed, lest we develop a false confidence in what we glimpse within one’s eyes. Are we seeing something that’s really there, or just projecting our own perceptual fictions?

  Someone speaking a foreign language is saying something, too, but without knowing that language, you won’t understand a word of it.

  In short, our feelings and perceptions are not fully dependable. If we judge one another based on the scant, singular information broadcast by the eyes, then that judgment has been in haste, being far too shallow and rash to be anything close to accurate. By thinking that all one needs to know can be extracted from a good hard look in the eye, we run the risk of seeing what isn’t there, positive or negative, as my respective photographs go to show.

  The moral of the story: yes, the eyes can and do reveal something of what lies behind them, but without proper, well-grounded interpretation, such eye-gazing can give way to misunderstanding, perhaps grossly undeserved. So, really, it’s the observer’s responsibility to avoid this perceptual pitfall, rather than falling on the eyes’ owner, who probably has about as much control over their unconscious body language as a dog does its tail. It’s yet another case of “black-and-white” versus “shades of grey.” Sometimes, feelings and appearances can be accepted. Others, however, we’d do well to think twice, when we have the luxury.

  So there you have it, folks: conventional wisdom—gasp! —can be in error. However ubiquitous and well-circulated (and however believable it appears within TV and movies), an ancient cliché like “The eyes are the windows to the soul” can be so narrow and imprecise, it’s one step from just plain wrong. Much of the time, this sort of hollow “knowledge” only distorts rather than reveals, such is its effect on one’s thinking and reasoning. No such one-liner can be relied upon in real life, where most of a person’s reality lies in circumstances, state of mind, and the other minutiae comprising the greater backdrop of their life. What’s more, many of those things are so vague and ill-defined as to be scarcely known, even to the eyes’ owner themselves, much less to an outside observer.

  This complex reality, in which the unknown far exceeds the known, has bearing on each and every one of us. To see the world at all accurately, and avoid sn
ap judgments and misunderstanding, we must fully realize life’s complexity, however inconvenient and unsatisfying it might feel. The one-dimensional reality forged by appearances and feelings might be attractive, because few people want to be left with unknowns; however, rejected or accepted, those unknowns are still there (and can still come up and bite you in the behind). Once swept under the rug, the dirt does not vanish.

  To sum up my essay, I’ll frame it in the Golden Rule: Were you to be judged on the complicated, ill-defined appearance of your eyes, how would you feel?

  XII. THE DANGERS OF EXPECTATION

  Once, I narrowly escaped two traffic accidents in as many seconds.

  I was turning through an intersection, with the right-of-way, when an oncoming driver started to turn, also—directly toward me. I slammed on my brakes, after which I was beeped at—from behind, the car that had nearly rear-ended me when I stopped short. I’d averted one accident, only to instigate a second.

  Though, did I really instigate the second accident? After all, the driver behind me should’ve been able to stop safely, had they not been expecting me to complete my turn.

  The incident was a comedy of