It was late afternoon. The bus had hardly any people it, which allowed me to have a double seat all to myself. I was staring out of the window, thinking of ways to pass the time faster. The road, though through the middle of the town, had few building around it. I was gazing at the peculiar arrangement of the clouds - they appeared as a small island chain amidst the vast ocean of the sky. The sun was just at the right angle, so that the rays can illuminate the clothes from the side, giving them an orange shade. It was this scenery that I was gazing at, when a sudden building obstructed my view. I probably would have paid no attention to it, however it made me see something I had never before took the time to notice - the building moved to the side, yet the sky remained fixed in the background. This is definitely a common occurrence and precisely because of how often I had observed, I had never thought much of it. It made me realise how complexly our three dimensional our world is and how limited our eyes are. I turned to look at the next building that the bus was about to pass. First I saw the left wall, then the front, and then the right wall, the complexity of this three dimensional figure have grasped my curiosity. There was a certain magic to it, which no words can explain, no paper can illustrate. Only another wandering traveler can observe for himself on his journeys.
It is astonishing how our world is three dimensional and no matter how hard we try, there will always be some sides that we will never see. Our world may be three dimensional, yet our view is two dimensional. What we see can easily be illustrated in an image, fooling our eyes we are looking at a piece of reality, however it could never recreate the world as it is. We have seen our world only through our two dimensional keyhole and we have become used to that observed world - we simply lack the ability to imagine all the sides of an object at once. Only motion can reveal the secrets that our universe holds - remaining static is a curse I cannot wish anybody to endure. To a bird that flies above the city, a roof can lose its meaning of a top of a complicated three dimensional shape and in the eyes of the bird it just becomes a flat plain it can land on. Only motion can reveal to that bird that there was more that met the eye. We are no better than that bird - our eyes looking up to the stars, we forget that there is much more ground below us than there is sky above us. Whole unexplored world lies below us, beyond our grasp and explanation. I am no better than any of my fellow humans - I too remain fixated on the sky and had not something obstructed my view, my mind would have never conjured such thoughts.
Such ideas are present in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, where the prisoners perceive the world as two dimensional shadows. It is only when one is freed and moves to explore the world that he realises the great mistake. It is that dialogue that makes us ponder whether our world can be but a shadow of a greater truth.
Think of a dot - it knows not that above exists, only forward and sideways. This dot perceives the view as a line and fails to imagine the whole square at once. We can see that dot from above, being aware of a third dimension, we are able to imagine the whole world of the dot at once. Perhaps some great four dimensional being someday will come and show us how imperfect we are too, being able to imagine our three dimensional world at once.
And thus the bus stopped and I got off. I turned around to watch it drive away, until it was as small as a dime, and then I continued my journey.
YOU ARE READING
Feuilletons of a Lost Explorer - Chapter 2
Short StoryA simple story of an ordinary man and his observance of the mundane world.
