How things are

"We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be very limiting, this seeing."--Aunt Beast, A Wrinkle in Time, written by Madeline L'Engle.

Meeting the blind beasts of the planet Ixchel as a child taught me one of the most important lessons I have ever learned. I was 9, and the novel's female protagonist of an age not that much older than I captivated me.

On the planet Ixchel, there is not a great deal of light. That which does filter through results in a color spectrum best described as drab. Their fruits look unappealing. Everything looks...well, kind of depressing.

But that is not how things are on Ixchel. These semi-telepathic blind creatures know of substance, not of glamour, and their lives are far richer than we can quantify with our feeble seeing. Tasting the unappealing fruits, the humans who have been accidentally stranded on this planet are astounded to discover that these fruits taste indescribably good. The same can be said of the beasts--no eyes, no fingers but rather tentacles, furs in muted browns and grays, and yet they are indescribably good in a way that humans do not know how to be--we literally do not have the sensory set to teach us such things as having to live in a society where people can know what you are thinking and what "best behavior" could really mean.

As a child whose primary sensory experience was not visual but rather auditory, I felt kinship with the beasts...and deep envy at their ability to know how things are. I never forgot the lesson that looks can deceive and that character is borne out within (a lesson that, hilariously enough, was reinforced on an episode of ABC's Super Friends Saturday morning cartoon).

In life, so many people are satisfied if something looks good. An attractive spouse, despite character, might be more appealing to one's friends--and to yourself, if you're going to be honest. The good-looking, well-put-together executive must be doing something right if his sartorial abilities are that sharp. Never mind that he can't type and doesn't know what the Dow Jones Industrial Average averages (and he works in stocks)–that suit means he's got it all together.

Maybe Donald Trump looked better to people than Hillary Clinton and that's why they voted him in because it's okay to age as a man in this culture--it means a man is distinguished--but women must remain forever youthful. (On the flip side, young men are innovative, but a young woman doesn't have enough experience to lead.)

I do not know how to get those around me on the train of being more concerned with how things are than how we're afraid they are because of what we see, even when our eyes lie to us. The struggle continues, I guess.

May we all value the substance of our lives, the intangible character that informs us of how things are.