What is the World?

What is the world?

Is it what we see, or is it what we feel? Is there an absolute, definitive truth out there, or is it just a patchwork quilt of sewn-together perceptions that we gather in our brains and try to make sense of?

I don’t know, so if you came here expecting an answer, then 1) you will be disappointed and 2) you really should have known better.

I always find it funny to think about how we all see the world differently, how everything we see is filtered through our preconceptions, biases and expectations. For example, I thought that Messi’s goal last night for Argentina was pretty good, but nothing exceptional. Lots of people could have scored one just as good. Whereas there are people saying that it is further evidence of his genius.

I don’t know who is right or wrong, or whether I have preconceptions that render my opinion invalid, or whether other people do. Or if we all do. It’s football, after all, there is no such thing as objectivity.

But it’s the same thing with every bit of information we gather. Everything passes through our brains before we understand it.

And there’s so damn much. Every day we’re assailed by colours, shapes, lights, sounds, touches. Right now, I can hear a motorbike, the sound of the keyboard, the wind, birds whistling, my chair creaking, cars droning by. And if you asked me, I’d probably say it’s fairly quiet.

So what is the world? Is it how all of those things combine together, or is it how we process it? Is there an objective reality?

In a way, yes. I mean, if we didn’t look out the window and see the trees, the trees would still be there.

But they would be duller. They would just be things that exist.

But if we look out at them, they become a wonderful cacophony of colour and movement – a gently-swaying mixture of subtle shades of greens and browns and yellows. We look closer, and see that they are made up of thousands of leaves, or branches large and small, of buds that have started to sprout, flowers and fruits that have begun to blossom.

By seeing the world properly, we appreciate it, and its existence is all the more profound. It all existed anyway, but by examining it, it becomes far more beautiful and purposeful.

Music – the notes all existed before, but until he put them in a particular order, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony didn’t exist. It didn’t change the reality of music, but it helped the world to appreciate and understand it better. To love it.

It’s the same with words. We put words in a particular order to help us make sense of the world, to understand reality a little bit better. It’s a somewhat trite cliché, but none the less true for it – we use words to hold up a looking-glass to reality, to show us what it truly means. And, like a looking-glass, words and stories cannot show us the world exactly as it is – they twist it, they turn it around, but they need to do that in order for us to understand why we should love it or fear it.

We’ve done that with myths and fairytales ever since humans first sat around a fire and realised that they could make sounds with their mouths to communicate to one another the dangers of the world. The stories were never meant to describe exactly what the world WAS, but rather to give an insight into how the world WORKS.

And every generation since has taken those tales and modified them, improved them – made them relevant for the changed world. A tree is still a tree, just like a musical note is still a musical note. And a vampire is still a vampire. But we look at them differently now, hear them differently. And instead of running away from them, Bella falls in love with one and wants to kiss him.

Which is why the Random Writers decided to hold up a Seeming Glass to myths and fairytales, and retell them with a new twist. To try to reveal some truths about what the stories are really all about and – hopefully – to entertain as many people as possible.

At least, that’s what I think it was for, and who’s to tell me I’m wrong?