Puddle Vision

Do you ever get the feeling that something big is going on and you have absolutely no idea? That, not only are you, not in on it, but you also have the suspicion that you are the only one who doesn’t know?

Ok, before we write this moment off as a paranoid delusion, I think we need to consider the possibility that it is a healthy form of paranoia; normal, even. A defense mechanism of sorts that we’ve developed over the years to save us from wandering around aimlessly and getting hurt.

Sometimes, we have moments when we lose touch with what’s going on and the world has a way of drawing us back to reality back to our senses by throwing this feeling into our gut. Telling us, ‘Hey, something feels funny. Look around idiot, before something bad happens to your face.’

Let me try to explain.

Think back to one of those days – when you haven’t left your apartment in about 24 hours, no ones called your phone, the internet is so dead, and you haven’t used your voice in so long the next time you speak someone will surely ask you if you just woke up. Ok, so it’s one of THOSE days, and you step out and lo and behold the world seems to be completely deserted and you don’t run into a single human being for at least a good 2 minutes. In those 2 minutes, you are likely to experience some strange thoughts. Something along the lines of, ‘Am I extremely late? Is something going on that I should know about?’ And likely, as you reach the 2 minute mark – ‘Am I the last person alive?’

Is this an exaggeration, or are there other people out there who get this feeling. This conspiracy feeling. The kind that makes you question, like this quote– ‘Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?’

One of those life moments where you’ve been obliviously preoccupied, really just don’t know what’s going on, and something stops you, and tells you to take a look around and figure out what’s what. To break out of your thoughts and to take a look at the present. For whatever reason, to stop you from stepping off the sidewalk and twisting your ankle, or to shake you into getting a grip on reality, or to give you a fresh perspective.

A defense mechanism, to protect us from what we do to ourselves – overthink.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe this really is some form of a paranoid delusional tendency that is a consequence of the one time in grade 4 when I came to school an hour late because my family totally and completely forgot about daylight savings time. Talk about not knowing what was going on. The entire world was in another time zone and I was wandering around living in the past.