On one of my days off during the Easter holidays I went out for a bit, to places that are otherwise hard to get to.
In the always hectic pace, I don’t get to do everything I want to. So I visited the Humanitas bookshop on Elisabeta Boulevard (this bookshop is a treat, it smells of books, of a library; my emotional memory was activated, I remembered the years I spent in the Central State Library, what good times!). and I discovered a new space dedicated to Romanian artists. It’s called Măiastra. I saw many beautiful things: clothes, pearls, rings, coffee or tea cups, scented candles, vases, perfumes, earrings, shoes. A little paradise for a woman. I bought a gorgeous ring and a hand-painted teacup, a beauty!
But I also tried on some clothes; nothing fit. I then put on the blouse I had come in and left. I walked around the city again, as I hadn’t walked since… I don’t even remember when. I saw how beautiful and bright Elizabeth Avenue can be when it’s not crowded! If there were more renovated buildings, it would be very attractive to many.
On the way home in the elevator, however, I noticed that at the store I had dressed with my blouse facing backwards. The funny thing is that the back of the blouse is very different and yet I didn’t notice. I was so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t notice what I had put on.
That got me thinking. How many times do we walk past others and not actually see them? We see that the other is a body, of course, but not what’s beyond the shell, what’s beyond the “How are you? Okay. And you? Me too!”
I had the opportunity to work with people who, after a few years, showed me that I hadn’t known them at all. I had taken for granted what they had said, without looking too hard for the subtext, what was not said. We pass each other by, so focused on ourselves, so opaque, that even our blinders seem more permissive than ourselves. The mind can be a friend playing hide-and-seek with us.
You know the gorilla experiment? In a gym two teams of kids play basketball: some dressed in white, some in black. The task of the viewer is to count how many times the white-clad players touch the ball. Concentrating on this task, at least half of the viewers don’t see what’s happening in between: a large gorilla dressed in black walks across the court, stops in the middle, fists his chest, then walks away.
When the task is to focus on something specific, we no longer see the whole, but perhaps only what is happening next to us. I say “maybe” because it often seems to me that even in life, in our interactions with others, we behave like TikTok: we scroll quickly, moving from one subject, one person to another, without at the end sticking with anything. Everything passes us by, like grease passes the Teflon pan. But that’s fine too, if we’re at peace, content, good with ourselves and the world.
