Blessed is the gift of an all-seeing eye.

Each glimpse is an exploration of the human being, a study of the immaterial nature of their very identity.

Underneath their clothes lie secrets that will never be muttered into honesty, along with the proud, velvet flesh flaunting the rawness they will never willingly speak of—the all-seeing eye sees everything.

Riddled are humans with both purity and rot—a testament to their inherent complexity. And it takes just one lingering glance to know someone better than they know themselves.

Nothing will be forgotten nor will be denied, for it is the body that knows what the mind does not.

No detail, no sin, no story left in secrecy. Nothing is spared from the all-seeing eye, except only its beholder.

There is beauty in being able to unfold someone’s personality with your very eyes. To see all the harsh creases and irreparable bends on the fronts  they present, and still seeing through the completeness at the core of its sense.

The horror, however, lies in the inability to apply that to oneself. To not know which parts of you are of grace or evil, and to have no answer to the question of who you truly are.

Terrifying is what it is, to have the burden of knowing others with just one look while your own sense of self dies at the desperation to be seen. 

And to make sense of it, you convince yourself that you’re comparable to others. You gut them, harsh and torturous, and pick apart the things you think you want for yourself. 

But still, this is the truth: you are nothing.

Absent of those identities, you continue to be nothing. And claiming what’s theirs to be your pride doesn't make you something.

You are with no ego, child—lost and directionless. And you are to bear that discomfort until you manage to forge yourself of something that is yours to truly own.

You have gravely misunderstood the meaning of your incapacities, and let your eyes spill envy at the sight of anything remotely valuable.

Poor blessed child who is blind from within. You’ve turned your gift into your curse.

- Gerlu Elardo

(Illustration by Miles Munich Montreal Jimenez/FEU Advocate)