The truth is, you can’t trust what you see. Your body is fallible. Your mind is fallible. You are fallible. You never know if what you’re seeing and hearing is true. That’s obvious and simple if you consider it for even a moment, a cliché practically. But think it through. Think through what it means.
That ringing in your ears? Do you know what it is? Of course not – how could you. Standing where you are right now, surrounded by colors, lights, sounds, and the chaos of this room, how could you possibly pin down anything? It’s a disaster zone for your brain, an utter deluge of information, an overload so complete that you don’t even realize it.
Pause for a moment, please. Stand still and slow your breathing. Open your eyes and your ears. Take it all in. Really. Don’t give me any bullshit – actually try to absorb it all. Every single light and their varying shades; the shadows spawned by the folds of the fabrics; the reams upon reams of said fabrics, burying this space in their stitching; the graphs and charts and data points staring at you from that wall and that pillar; the music – no, no that track, but that other one instead; the voices whispering in your ears and the illusions taking place all around you at this very moment.
You cannot process all of that at once. There’s too much. At a certain point, your brain just stops letting you know that some of these things are even happening. You filter it out. Your brain lies to you.
You are drowning in a sea of deception and you can’t even tell.
By Conor Flanagan