Milaknzkva - Mila

shits though when you realize your parents dont know you at all

a perspective on sonder

Sometimes, I wonder how one can be so close-minded. Selfish, even. Basking in the dying light of a summer evening, letting it wash over my face, I silently watch as one of my friends swats mindlessly at a small fly. It's small, harmless, but they smack it down without a second thought, and I can't help but wonder if that fly had a little family somewhere out there, waiting for it. A thought pops up in my bored mind: is this fly, probably not even able to fully grasp the concept of being alive let alone other living beings, even really conscious? My brows furrow when my companion kills it in one quick motion. It might be pretentious of me, yeah, sure. It's not like I've never done the same, but I do, just for a moment, feel sorry for the little life. Had its crime been invading personal space, or, as so many artificially empathetic ones have said before me, was it being small?

A campfire crackles in the distance with the people who lit it chatting cheerfully, sat around it. Slowly, I descend into the wild grass, stretching into it and feeling every little blade on my skin. What do I gain, pretending I care? Seeing beautiful, tall flowers freshly cut down by machinery, wondering whether they had wanted to keep on living for a reason other than pure instinct. They might not even have that, do they? I deeply mourn the loss of something unfamiliar, a stranger; something people consider a weed. So should I, and yet I don't. Maybe I do it to feel morally superior. Maybe I just want to elevate myself from the rest, pretend like I am in any way better. Neither of those reasons makes me any less selfish than my peers, whom I condescendingly looked down upon; rendering me the very person I tried so desperately not to be.

It is strange to think about the fact the lives not so far from mine can be so, so different. Really, it is pretty obvious, and yet I vividly remember seeing my neighbour in some odd place, breaking my perception of them as just my neighbour, something out of my field of vision, completely, forcing me to realize that they're so much more, have an own life, an own soul. A person that probably sees me as just their neighbour, like I did moments ago. It is apparent and logical, and yet I was, embarrassingly enough, never really aware of it. Sighing, I rise to my feet, grazing carefully on the lawn. The warm, salty breeze flows over from the sea and fills my lungs.. Soft waves crashing on the shore, I look over to my fellow sheep again, tormenting and being tormented by flies again.

And I wonder if humans would ever understand.

Jack Simcock