By Alaa Gaafary
And here you thought you were safe. All the running in the labyrinths, the cowering behind walls, the scaling of ladders and limbs—and back to the base, with an eye staring over you. Can you imagine the helplessness of that rat race? The Truman Show, the episodes of Big Brother, the horrors of Orson’s1984, or any other projection of dystopia—you know them well. It’s different to read the concept in books, to view it in films… but to live such a life?
What would you do? How could you escape? Would you want to? How might you cope? If you think about it, for some of us, there is always that eternal eye—the eyes of the Creator, however we choose to name him. Isn’t it similar? One—or multiple—being(s) in the audience. Watching. Judging. Waiting. But more often than not, that is an Eye of justice, of love, of guardianship, and rarely of intervention (is it not?). Does that bother you, if you consider it from that perspective?
Somehow, I think we do not mind this omnipotent watcher, but we would certainly bristle at the idea of someone following us around all day with a camera, a permanent—albeit silent—paparazzi. I mean all day—from the bedroom to the cafeteria room to the bathroom to any room. Is it the invisibility factor that matters most? The no-risk-of-intervention that we count on? The indifference or the negligence or the turn-the-blind-eye-on-us that we sometimes pretend that the Eye has? Is it the nature of the omnipotence itself (I don’t want a fellow human to know, but if God knows then that’s all right—because my God always conveniently understands or stays silent?)? Or is it that we believe without a doubt that the Eye looks down with love, forgives every transgression, and might even forget if not overlook some?
There are countless distinctions between a paranoid dystopia and a protective spirituality with which I can not argue, nor would I want to… yet also—as in any comparison—underlying similarities like such a one; leave it or take it.
"Angreek87"
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