Imagine a Planet

(From the Archive of writings from 2009-2011)

Imagine a planet very like ours. Now imagine a race of people very like ourselves living on this planet. There is an understanding among these people that, in order to survive, they must wear glasses with a particular sort of yellow lens. The reasons for this are slightly unclear and not often considered, as it has always been like that, but it is known that it would be impossible to negotiate the world without them, and removal is unthinkable as it would inevitably lead to death. 

The children of this race are fitted with the glasses before the age of two. The glasses change the colour of things slightly so the sky looks green and actually nothing looks what we would call blue anymore. In fact these people don’t even have a word for blue because it isn’t something they experience once the glasses are fitted. Most people quickly forget that they ever saw things differently, although there is often a longing for something not quite remembered. Occasionally people have glimpses of blueness through a brief displacement of their glasses, but because of the known danger of this they are quickly replaced before there is a full registering of what has been seen or how it occurred. Still they are left with a suspicion that there might be something more to life and a desire to discover what this might be. There are old stories about another way of seeing things, but they talk metaphorically of removing glasses and it is hard to understand what this really means.

Now imagine a person living on this planet. Let us make her female, just because we can. This person wears her glasses all the time, just like everyone else. One day she goes for a walk in a remote area and has a very unusual accident which results in her glasses being broken. With her eyes tightly closed, she knows that there is nothing she can do. There is no way to find her way back to a repair shop without sight. There is no choice but to accept the inevitability of death and open her eyes.  

What a surprise! Everything looks different, clearer, brighter and there is a wonderful colour she has never seen before and yet somehow remembers. It is suddenly obvious that it has always been like this and it was only the glasses creating the illusion of it being any other way. She rushes back home to share the good news.

When she gets home some people notice that she looks different but can’t quite put their finger on what it is. To them it is impossible that anyone could survive without glasses, so they don’t see this even when she points it out to them. She tells them how things look without glasses and they realise that she is referring to the old stories, and they patiently explain that it is only a metaphor. She tries to explain that the sky is a different colour, but has no words to express this, and kind people try and help her see that it is actually green, just as it always has been. Some people think she is trying to make herself special, and she tries to explain that actually she is really ordinary; she just had an accident and it is the same for everybody. 

Gradually our friend realises that there is no way to share what she sees and gets on with her ordinary life. Occasionally she meets other people without glasses and it is such a joy to share in the wonder of how the world appears now. Sometimes she meets people who remember or have glimpsed blueness, and tries to find ways to help them understand about the glasses.  She realises that people cannot choose to take their own glasses off, as, from their perspective, that would be suicide. And she cannot try and remove them for other people, as she would be arrested for attempted murder or declared insane. Maybe people might have their own accident and see through the illusory nature of the protective glasses they have been wearing. Or maybe they will continue to live in a world with a green sky, which is also nice.