This thought occurred to me when I saw a close-up image of an eye on a Writer Unboxed round-up email. The article was about point of view in a novel, but it was the close-up picture* that really caught my attention. It was gorgeous.
Like novels (among other things), eyes are unique while being similar, interesting while you’re interested, sometimes they captivating and can capture you for life.
That thought led me down an avoidance-doing-my-chores rabbit-hole, where I started thinking about and comparing eyes to other things. The thought that twigged me was a planet, namely the one we live on.
Our planet is round. It's fascinating, complex and can do amazing things. It has systems we barely understand (yet still mess with). It provides beautiful colours, inspires poetry and more, and it needs help.
Just like eyes!
(Warning: The following chart includes blatant opinions and does not represent everyone's approach to eyes, or the earth, or anything else, really.)
Here's what similarities I landed on:
Eyes | The Earth |
Eyes are round, fascinating things. An eye is an organ, one in a conglomerate of systems in the body, like the heart, lungs, and bladder. It’s a complex organ, like the Chinese Sheng mouth organ, my mother-in-law’s Hammond, and world’s largest (according to Guiness) the Midmer-Losh pipe organ. | Planets, especially the one we’re on, is also a round, fascinating thing. The earth has complex systems, like the biosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere. All these things that we walk on, swim in and breath in, and take for granted. |
Eyes can do amazing things, like transfer light into images so we can amble around in the world without bumping into things. As long as we keep things – like fingers, dirt, and blinding lights out of an eye, the eye won’t get destroyed. | Amazingly enough, our planet spins on its own, floating (we think) around a star in a fairly regular path, all without bumping into other things, well, maybe except the occasional asteroid. It doesn’t need to destroy some resources to stay warm. Or cool. |
Eyes are colourful orbs that add beauty to our world. An eye can come in different colours, shapes and sizes. | The earth is a colourful orb, providing each of us all sorts of creatures with eyes of various colours as well as objects of different sizes and shapes for those eyes to look at. Planets can come in different colours and sizes, anywhere from gigantic to small. |
Eyes are mentioned by or the subject of a plethora of literary works. Lots of poems, both bad and good, have been inspired by looking into someone’s eyes. | The gorgeous world in which we live has also been the subject of artistic works, created both on its surface, below, and above. I'm thinking of: books, studies, poetry, songs, paintings, photographs, skywriting, cloud formation, and more. |
Eyes can have medical issues, requiring someone to repair an eye's damaged systems. For example, a vitrectomy, which hurts, takes ages to heal, and leaves you (okay, me) with cataracts, scar tissue and crappy vision overall). But that’s for a different post. | The earth has issues and needs help… something to soothe its battered systems. For example, the earth is subject to us filling of forests and oceans with crap, depleting life forms, and leaving us feeling powerless and sad. But that’s for a different post. |
As always, comments welcomed! What do you compare to eyes?
* Beautiful Iris, by Lizapopova143, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Comments