Three weeks on the planet and already he’s got more gravitas than most people I’ve met in waiting rooms and corporate offices across this increasingly plastic world. Those eyes, Christ, those eyes, they’re not just looking at you, they’re looking through you, taking inventory of every lie you’ve ever told yourself, every shortcut you’ve taken, every time you’ve chosen comfort over truth.
Van Gogh got it right, which seems appropriate since he was batshit crazy and could see things the rest of us miss while we’re busy scrolling through our phones. Something infinite in a baby’s eyes. Yeah. I see it. It’s fucking terrifying.
Three Week Charlie doesn’t know yet that the world is full of people who peaked in high school, politicians who lie before breakfast, and the soul-crushing realization that your best years might already be behind you. He doesn’t know about traffic jams or tax returns or the quiet desperation that settles into most people somewhere around their thirtieth birthday. He just knows warmth, hunger, the sound of voices he trusts.
How do I live up to that? How do I look into eyes that pure and promise I won’t fuck it all up? That I’ll show him the good stuff, the way light hits the water at dusk, what it means to stand up for something that matters, the importance of treating people with dignity?
I can’t promise that. I’ll screw up.
But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the point is that Charlie’s watching, learning, absorbing. And I better bring my A-game. Because those eyes see everything. And they deserve better than my half-assed bullshit.
If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.
Vincent van Gogh