Distortion Glasses

I have a memory of going shopping with my family when I was five or six years old. I'm not sure where we went - maybe the mall. But when we'd finished shopping, it was almost pitch black outside. The street lights illuminated our walk to the car. I remember my sister and I having these glasses - these ones my dad had bought. When you looked through them, it made all of the colors, all of the lights just blur together. It was like a kaleidoscope. Everything looked distorted, different, more amusing than the town I'd known.

Now, looking back I wonder if some people wear distortion glasses their whole life. Maybe they don't even know. They only see the blurred reality of what really is in front of them. Behind those glasses, everything looked fantasic, phantasmal though it wasn’t real. The grocery store lights looked blurred, rainbow  like an amusement park ride. But it was still just a grocery store. Do some people get lost in their allusions, in what they want things to be and never open their eyes to the way things actually are?

I could be overthinking it. I was just a child, a child fascinated by cheap glasses and magic tricks. But it meant something to me. If it’s stayed fresh in mind for this long it must have meant something. Maybe I’m just longing to look at it from a philosophical perspective. I can’t help but wonder, have I been wearing those glasses my whole life, in a sense? My whole life up till now, I’ve been innocent, I’ve been a child – going to school, coming home to a place provided by my father. Everything is paid for me now. Everything is set out for me now. Have I been seeing things from a distorted view? I don’t have a job yet, or have to pay utilities.  I'm sheltered behind these glasses but soon I'll be out on my own. What happens when I go out into the “real world”? Will I sink into depression like my father did and start drinking? Will I see the world for what it really is and not like what I have to look at? What happens when I have to remove these glasses? Will I be able to survive without my youthful illusion?