Today I just went down and sat by the lakes for half an hour, enjoying a nice can of ice coffee, just seeing life passing by. Copenhagen has five artificially made lakes smack in the middle of the city. A kind of Central Park, just with lakes, and I live close by. There I saw the local bum, whom I have seen often. The strange thing about him is that he always likes to hang around by that particular part of the area, which is a bit ‘posh’. Don’t go thinking I’m some kind of rich kid, I got my flat by a bit of luck and have a very cheap rent, even though I’m living in a fairly ‘rich’ part of town. Anyway, I guess he likes this part of town (or even lives here) even though most bums seem to dislike places where everybody seems to enjoy a high standard of living. But Denmark is also one of the richest countries in the world in terms of poverty and social security in the broadest sense of the word, so even if you’re a bum, you can still manage.

I digress… {{Ahem}}

One thing though, which suddenly floored me was a thing I’d never really paid attention to up until today. First of all, I got curious about what this guy had done before he suddenly decided to become an ‘outsider’, or should we call him a ‘mono-type’. Obviously he could need a shrink, because he talks a bit to himself. But besides that, if he took a bath, and got into some clean clothes he wouldn’t actually be bad looking. But secondly, and this is what got to me, there was something in his eyes which struck me. His eyes had this thing – it was not as much as a certain expression, but rather a general look, which felt all too familiar to me. It was like suddenly seeing myself reflected in his eyes, like I knew those eyes, like the eyes just as well could have been sitting on my face. That made me think: Are we all just one small, wrong step from becoming outcasts or is it just the familiarity of pain, joy and experience that we can see reflected in other people’s eyes?

On this day...

... in 2006: Creativity and holism
... in 2005: Stairway to Heaven