Hearing and Seeing

It is humanity's biggest vice to be interested in gossip or second hand information.  We love to hear about the lives of others.  Be it about relatives, neighbours, friends, colleagues, celebrities, villains...we love to hear stuff.  Be they true or not.  And we help these stories survive.  I remember (years back) I received a forward with 'photographic proof' how NASA faked the first moon landing.  Well, I don't think anyone of us believed the matter, but it still did not stop us from forwarding the mail to our contacts, just because we thought it was an interesting mail.  And I am quite sure, they would also have forwarded it on.  Thus the news spread.

It makes me often wonder how much value and importance we give to the 'spoken word'.  I would think that it is often something that depends from whom it comes.  For example: a friend might tell me a certain piece of information that might seem very unlikely.  I think I may remain sceptical also.  But if I had seen this piece of information in the newspaper (and that, too, on the front page) or if I had seen a documentary on it by a prominent channel known for its quality documentaries, I might have believed the matter quicker.  Which is why I guess people feel more cheated and outraged when the head of states are accused of lying rather than 'petty' players being convicted of being deceptive.

I think all of us realise that we rather believe what we see with our own eyes than what we hear.  Even if we come across things where we have to say, "I couldn't believe my own eyes", ultimately we will believe what we saw.  We trust our eyes/vision that much.  We might accept that we have misunderstood something that was said, but we will never say that we 'mis-saw' something.  

I am myself not sure where I am going with all this.  I haven't seen Jennifer for almost three weeks now.  And three weeks for an infant is three weeks of uninterrupted growth.  I swear: babies seem to grow by the day.  You buy them a dress now and within a week, it starts signs of being 'smaller'.  

All these three weeks, I have been hearing from Jenny's mother and Jenny's grandparents about Jenny.  I hear about how Jenny chases the cats, how she plays in the sand, how she started walking around by holding on to stuff, how she has grown bigger and so on and so forth.  And I have not seen a single picture of her yet from her holidays.  Even if the info comes from the most reliable sources, I still need to see her doing all this.  I am not sure if I am just making excuses because I want to see her sooooo badly, but I I'd rather see her doing all these things than hearing about it. I want to see her roaming around...I want to hear her giggle...I want to see her cranky!  And no amount of information over the phone is going to compensate for that.

Another 3 days and I shall have my wish granted.  I shall see Jenny again in three days.  And I really hope, that for the next immediate few months, we won't get separated again! :)