The Fame of Mirrored Windows

Writers write to be remembered.

Well, that's my personal belief, anyways. We write because we want someone to look back over the words we've put on a page, and we want them to see us. Here we are, a marker-pin to prove our existence.
We lived. We wrote. We were here.



Because the thing is, the human brain isn't qualified to fully know anyone else other than yourself. You can never know another in the same way you know yourself, never know every single thing that makes them tick. And even if you spend so much time with someone else- years of marriage and friendship and the like, you still won't know them. Not truly.

But writers, I think, try to escape that. We write about events and things that happen to us and we cross our fingers that someone will piece together the fragments of our lives and see the person underneath.
But even the writer's who reach fame are never really known. They're reduced to born on ___, wrote ____, married on ____ and died on ____. A simple formula easily applicable to even the most well-renowned poets, historians and authors.

My favorite book in almost the entirety of existence is "Paper Towns" by John Green, because my God, this book. I will never cease to sing praises of this book. It should be recommended reading for the entirety of the world. And it brings up many excellent thoughts and points, while still managing to be awkwardly hilarious. But one of the main points that stuck to me was windows vs. mirrors.

The windows vs. mirrors thing is the concept that no person can ever truly be a "window" into themselves, and that if you try to see them, you only end up with a fun house mirror version of yourself.  Because it's not really that person, when you think of them. It's what you think they are.
And what scares me is the fact that I don't think you can turn people into windows.

I don't think it is humanly possible to fully see someone else in a way that isn't just a mirror, and that's scary. I will never know my sister. I will never know my mother, or my father, or my dog, or my friends, or my employer. I will never know anyone fully except myself, and even then, I am a secret. My mother and sister and father and dog will never know me, either. We're all just secrets, I suppose.


I write about my life and my thoughts and my odd little mind, because I'm not sure I want to be a secret. But I don't think I just want people to know about me- I don't want to just open my window.
I think I want someone to like the view.

I don't want someone to fall in love with me, per se- I've already long since established my views on romance- but maybe I just want people to care? I want people to see me, all of me, everything, and not recoil in disgust or pity or what have you. I'm not sure. I guess this blog is really just a mirrored window that I'm trying to open.

But why? What's the point? Even if I manage to get the window open, why do I even care?
Taking into account how fame is one of the most sought after ideals, I think being known is a deeply-rooted human desire. We want people to know our names and our faces and our lives. But why? Fame is so incredibly fleeting- there were artists and authors and musicians that were incredibly popular when my parent's were young, that I've never so much as heard of. It doesn't last; nothing does. So why even bother?

I guess I try to escape human tendencies: desires and fears that I think are a part of everyone, but I don't. I don't escape them. I like the idea of romance, and of being a window, and I cower in fear to some of the most trivial things, even when my voice of logic scolds me- I know better than this! I still can't reason myself out of fear. Maybe knowledge can never overcome what's so deeply imbedded into our brains, our DNA?

And even if it is possible, I'm hardly the person to try.