Shadow People

Do you ever think about all the people you take with you after they are gone or you just don’t talk anymore.

All those people who did something that affected you deeply, whether for better or worse.
You carry them with you everywhere you go, whether you like it or not. 

And if your brain works the same way mine does, you worry and you stress and you overthink constantly, then you probably think about those people and think ‘what would they say if they saw me now’ ‘what would he have done in this situation’ ‘I wonder if she’s disappointed in me’.

But is it not in a sense selfish to think that all the dead and the lost care about is you, the living, should you not just leave them to their peace. 

Do you ever think about how most of what you see is altered by your brain and is not a true reflection of how your eyes are built to see the world. 

Did you know that your immune system doesn’t know that your eyes exist and if it ever found out it might treat your own eyes as a foreign body and attack, possibly leaving you blind. 

Did you know that your eyes see things upside down and your brain has to correct this in real time.
 
Did you know that as much as 90% of what you ‘see’ is constructed, filled in or edited my your brain, for example; you have a blind spot in your vision where your nose should be visible, this is due to the fact that you are quite good at subconsciously remembering whether or not you do or do not in fact have a nose.

You can only really see your nose properly if you close one eye but even then it will appear blurry and not quite in focus. 

The consent of being close or far sighted from birth, though foreign to me, seemingly proves that the human eye is not an infallible or objective observer but instead a faulty machine made with only ease of use in mind. 

It’s my belief that the world is, in a sense, what you perceive it to be, for example; when I say the colour red, how do you know what I’m seeing is the exact same shade of red that I am seeing.

We can’t know for certain, we just have to try and agree.

Your brain makes up what’s in your peripheral vision by remembering things around you and assuming information for your other senses, your eyes only process changes in the environment around you that your brain doesn’t automatically know what to do with. 

Your brain doesn’t know what is behind you, things directly behind you can not be perceived do to the lack of any visual sensory stimulus, anything could be behind you at any given time assuming it does stimulate a different sense.

How do you know it’s not the shadowy conglomerate of everyone you’ve ever met? How do you know that when you think you're alone you're not haunted by the echoes of everyone you’ve ever wronged? 

I often find that if I am thinking of people from my past I will hear some say my name or I’ll hear them walking past behind me or a clattering bang or I’ll just think I see someone moving in the corner of my eye. 

I don’t know if they mean me harm, but I’m sure I saw one right behind me, just for a split second, when I looked in the mirror yesterday.