When Reality Shatters

Inspired by Post-Lennyism

This post is a a short parable, in the style used by Lenny Sun, our noted Weekend Guest, on his own Substack. I highly recommend checking it out for some trippy introspection.

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A young man lives in a small apartment, alone. The apartment is well-kept. The young man decorated it. He’s happy there.

Life is quiet but good. The young man walks just a few minutes to and from his office. His job is interesting. Really! It takes up most of his time, but the young man enjoys working together with his colleagues to try to solve problems.

It’s all a matter of answering open-ended questions. Reducing uncertainty appeals to him.

One day, the young man is walking home from work. It’s warm out. The summer breeze lazes through the air. What a nice day, the young man thinks. His right eye itches, and he brings his right hand up to rub it.

He rubs, but the itching doesn’t cease. The sun shines down. Clouds move through the sky. A dog on a leash follows its owner in the opposite direction.

The young man presses his palm to his right eye, shutting the eyelid and rubbing vigorously. While the itching doesn’t stop, it does appear to move a bit. Ah, he thinks, some dust must have blown into my eye.

The young man makes it back to his home. He walks through his well-kept apartment to his bathroom mirror. He stares. His right eye stares back at him. It’s hard to tell, he thinks. He stares and stares until his eye waters, but he can’t find any dust. He pinches his eyelid between two fingers and lifts, finding nothing.

The itching persists. He cooks dinner, wiping his hand on a towel every few minutes when he can no longer resist rubbing his eye. The young man tries to sleep, but his mind races. There’s no reason for the itch, and he can find no answer to the itch. This frustrates the young man to no end.

Enraged, the young man finally leaps out of bed and marches back to his bathroom. Outside, streetlights are ablaze. Clouds have blown in from the sea. Inside, an investigation is taking place. A light is shined at the offensive eye, and the young man blinks, trying to adjust to the glare.

Just below the eyelid, he spots a line peaking down, almost perpendicular. That must be it - an eyelash! he muses. An answer has been found! But, try as he might, the young man is unable to reach the lash.

Each time he thinks he’s grabbed it, he pulls his pinched fingers away, empty. The line sits there, tantalizing, mocking him.

Still, the young man has his answer. He can go back to bed. It is far later than he would like, but he finally falls asleep, exhausted.

Unfortunately, the itching continues. For a week, each morning, and each evening, the young man tries to reach that lash, to no avail. His right eye is bloodshot from all those minutes being forced open. If anything, the irritation has gotten worse.

After a week of this, the young man goes to see an eye doctor.

“I’ve got something in my eye. I can’t get it out!” he moans.

She instructs him to sit down and look into her ophthalmoscope. The light is bright, but no worse than than the light the young man has held up to his own eyes, trying to pull out that damn lash.

The doctor looks for no more than 30 seconds, nods, and then pulls out her prescription pad. “This is for eyedrops, just bring it to the pharmacy down the street.”

“Will the eyedrops wash out the lash?”

“Oh, there is no lash - you just have a little dryness. Probably allergies.”

Probably allergies.

Probably allergies.

For the young man, the itch is flung far out of his mind. However, the room tilts just a bit. Everything seems to take on a different hue. The world is a bit darker.

“Can you check again?” he asks quietly.

She refuses. Instead, she shows him to a well-lit mirror and asks him to point to the lash. He finds it easily, pointing to that line peaking out from under his eyelid.

For a split second, the doctor laughs. A short, quick bark. It bites at the young man’s soul. “Oh, that’s just a blood vessel. Like I said, just take these eyedrops for a few days and…”

Her voice drowned out.

Something inside the young man ached. Maybe his pride? He, who truly loved answers, had been truly damaged by this one. The uncertainty had been chipped away to reveal something unexpected and unacceptable. It didn’t matter that the resolution was near. So many hours had been spent searching for the lash that wasn’t.

As the young man stepped onto the street, prescription in hand, he realized that his eye had stopped itching. It was another sunny day. He sighed.

On a totally unrelated note, the result of the poll is in. After 27 years of having blue eyes, my eyes are apparently green. As you can probably guess from my little story, I have a flexible and open mind, and I am handling this news well!