broken images
A thought.
I was looking at the cracked television, in my living room: It is fractured like us through our illusion of virtual escapade
The lines cut open the display like a spider’s web, instantly reminding us of how easily reality can violate our digital dreams.
The embarrassed apologies of my friend still ringing in my ears, a waltz sung out of tune between remorse and nervous chuckling.
Such an easy mistake, a fleeting instant in a life full of occupied engagements.
My friend had fallen, his limbs twisting out from him as he tumbled out of the screen that was our family window to another place.
The pinky sheen of our life’s rose-colored glasses blew away like dust in that instant, as we found ourselves staring back at the sharp lines and deep creases out there.
At first, I just piled old movies into a box. The games, the movies, the common experience — these things are now ruined by this sullen crack in our digital vision.
With my finger over the power button, I took a deep breath while my heart raced in anticipation behind its confines waiting for that recognizable light to turn on.
The display turned on but the view was warped, shattered by fissures that spread out like veins from a spider.
After each failed attempt to fix it, I became increasingly desperate motivational rape was the best description of what had happened.
This realization came about with the loss.
More than just pixels but a manifestation of our shared evasion — the cyber worlds we had delved into, the electric terrains which beheld all in us as one.
It got me thinking days after about how we only see fragments of the world and people around us.
Or just how much of our perspective is collated by way of these technical lenses?
And what are the truths that we fail to see because of our focus on such artificial realities?
The boundaries of existence, once so distinct, were made hazy — muddled by the fractures in our digital-looking glass.
But later I started to question the vision itself.
What we passed off as the piercing, impersonal eye of a camera was always entangled with human intent and subjectivity; even if there is object shall remain subjective.
How much of it… is colored by the lenses — rose-tinted or cracked — through which we decide to look at the world?
All of the thrill we were once chasing in our virtual experiences had left us blind to the beauty that was lying right under our noses — could it be we no longer have what it takes to see?
The irony did not elude me. We had created in physical form the embodiment of life not being a perfect digital world you could escape from.
And days went into weeks and this stabbing pain of losing her became a bit more blunt. It was replaced by a different type of consciousness.
And while now, I found myself searching more intently through the world around me — paying closer attention to the details that might’ve been lost on me before: how light whispers across my friend’s face as we laugh together; or what looks subtly lingers in their eye… beyond anything any VR headset could truly capture.
That my new way of looking is now a slower, more thoughtful eye.
In the moments of each day, not in pixels and polygons.
I had game nights (one without a screen in sight) and invited friends over, making sure they played with the things before them.
I knit myself new lines of interconnectedness — relations that required no headset, no virtual avatar.
This was FAR from a perfect solution. And in that respect, I did sometimes feel longing for what is gone, the pull of digital escapism still had a hold on me.
On the other hand… over time, with every passing day — I found myself becoming less involved in virtual reality and more rooted in what was happening before me.
What that screen taught me was a hard truth, cloaked in some very deep love: The world — like life itself — is broken and fragile.
It must be periodically scrutinized and corrected; for it is nothing but blind faith in the opinions provided to us.
Technology can enable us to find and discover, but digital capture must never replace authentic seeing.
Because while they’re all sitting down for dinner and chatting, I don’t feel like putting on a VR helmet just yet anyway.
I sigh instead and I recognize the warmth in their smiles, the cheekyness in their eyes, and everything that is authentically happening between us.
At that moment, I realized how we never see the world whole with unfiltered eyes. Yet in recognizing our imperfections, we discover the abundance of being alive.
I’m not about to thank that accidental run-in, but the unintended gift has grown on me.
Some of the most precious broken images, I’ve learned to see over time do not come in picture-perfect HD quality projections but instead within broken yet lovely human experiences.
In losing this pristine digital window I gained something much messier, infinitely more human, and completely ‘truly’ analog.
