Mind of the Beholder

I think something that has been reoccurring throughout our first few topics is that life, or even just truth, is in the mind of the beholder. We are all the main characters of our own individual story and set forward what we believe to be true whether that is the commonly accepted belief or not. One thing that becomes apparent though is how insignificant we can be in someone else’s story. In our first reading, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, Peyton Farquhar’s story told from just a Union soldier witnessing it would just be a quick unimaginative tale of a man being hung and then, most likely, the soldier would continue on with his life. At the same time we might play a greater role then even we know. The “Writer” in the Supernatural clip we watched thought of himself as a mere fiction writer when in that reality he turned out to be a prophet to God.  Whether he chooses to accept such a role would still be in his hands.

            As humans we are often times too caught up in our own stories and even overlook where our stories overlap with someone else’s. We might even create our own truths or lies based on stubbornness or lack of knowledge. In Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jonah will often times look down on others and hold his religion of Bokonon as the one and only truth in life. “Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass of a seeming team that was meaningless”(p. 91). Though the group of Hoosiers might seem like a joke, or even just irrelevant, to Jonah this group meant a lot to Hazel who seemed to love having something in common with people she just met. Living in his own story he creates truths and lies about the world as anyone can do. Even in our collective reality we create truths in the forms of laws and regulation, deciding what is just and that lying in general is bad. By agreeing, for the most part, with what is good and bad in society people try to create a world with mutual happiness and even this will eventually be written down as a story of its own in the form of history. And just something more to think about even if someone’s life/ beliefs are against social norms who is to deprive said person of their desired reality especially if it does not affect yours?