17 Sep A Few Inches Apart
Our eyes sit only a few inches apart, and they never see exactly the same thing.
Each takes in the world from its own position. Shift those few inches and an edge appears, something moves into view, something else disappears behind it. Our brains receive both images and bring them together, giving us a sense of the world that neither eye could quite provide on its own.
A few inches is remarkably close. And still, each eye sees something the other doesn’t.
It makes me think about another kind of closeness, the kind we build with people over years of knowing them. Years of friendship, marriage, parenting, or working alongside someone give us a deep and earned sense of who they are. We recognize a look before the words come. We know the old stories and the tender places, what delights them and what wears them down. There is something warm and wonderful about knowing someone this well.
And yet, the people closest to us keep changing, sometimes in ways they are only beginning to understand themselves. They surprise us. They see something differently than we imagined they would. They tell us a story we have somehow never heard, or tell an old one in a way that makes us realize we missed something the first time.
Knowing someone well is never the same as knowing them completely. Maybe this is part of the humility closeness asks of us. Even a lifetime beside someone leaves room for discovery.
After all, our own two eyes can spend a lifetime side by side and still have something new to show each other.