Guest Post: By T. E. Frailey: A Young Person’s Vision
In Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, Chapter Three, entitled: The Night Shadows, he wrote, “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart neatest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.”
Dickens struck upon an integral characteristic of humanity, that every beating heart is the greatest quandary to its companions. The uniqueness of each human person far exceeds the design of a thumb print. The human person (ration animal or not) is a mystery that would take, I think, an eternity to unravel.
Dickens’ words strike a deep chord in me. The fact that we can see only through our own eyes is a somewhat mind-boggling consideration. The image of a city at night, filled with tens of thousands of unique hearts, paints a spectacular image. It makes me think of the human heart as a diamond, or crystal, with a million facets. We show particular faces to particular people. But when all is said and done, even our best friend will, at times, still marvel at the mystery of who we are.
