Shards and Fragments
Understanding came late to Pablo - neither particularly intelligent nor a good student when young, and having no outstanding talents or natural intelligences in himself (or anywhere on either side of his family tree for that matter), he had to blindly grope out of the darkness over a lifetime. Being cautious by nature, even timid in many ways, he groped with painful slowness out of his personal abyss.
With nothing else to go by at first he followed the will o'wisp blinking lights of wants, needs, and elusive desires. The cost was many hurts from stubbed toes, forehead cracks on corners, knees and funny bones whacked on unexpected furniture strewn across his path in the darkness - as s the blinking lights turned out to be, more often than not, others’ needs, wants and desires and not truly his own-- his real self’s. Not to mention the damage he caused to those unfortunate to be in the path of his blunderings. He was always surrounded by broken, knocked to the floor and shattered things.
Many times he prayed for an aid: a flashlight, a lamp, a guide to point the way, tell him the right direction out, and at his weakest lead him by the hand. And these did come sometimes, in maddeningly brief flashes illuminating a road ahead, or visions of the pathway itself becoming vaguely luminous lake an afterimage that briefly lingers on the eye. Perhaps most shocking was the realization that to succeed he needed a new set of eyes; the things he wished to see would not present themselves to ordinary sight.
During his time in the dark Pablo spent too much time punishing that which was not-perfect, in himself and in the world around him, and regrettably the people around him.
The clarity of light came, but in stages. At first simply presences only sensed without being seen ahead in the darkness; then indistinct darker shadows looming ahead in the black; then faint glimpses of movement, then finally as murky forms dimly perceived in a grayness. Pablo welcomed these improvements and spent much time studying the images he discerned, seeking to understand their relationship to his own. But when he reached out to touch them he found only a cool slick hardness, no responsive warmth.
In the end it was simply a matter of removing the blindfold which had masked his vision to see, clearly, he was standing in front of a mirror.
He smashed the mirror to shards and fragments, and was finally whole.