Raluca Florescu

Where sight stops, the world begins

When I was a child, I was terrified of new roads. Back then I believed the world ended where my sight stopped — that beyond what I could see there was nothing, that the world simply stopped there. I didn’t know that the unknown was only waiting to become known.

There was a vast world beyond my gaze — full of people with their own stories and eyes just as limited as mine. I met eyes that were gentle yet worn by life, eyes that had suffered and still managed to smile. Their eyes sparkled, always searching for more: more to see, more to feel, more to live this life fully.

Some eyes were young yet had already cried more than others. Some minds had felt pain too deeply and been swept away by its waves. The wrinkles beneath those eyes showed how far sorrow had traveled. It could always be worse, but it could also be better. I asked myself: was it worth sinking so deep into pain? In the end, it seemed that most of the harm was self-inflicted — born in people’s minds.

I used to think the world ended at the horizon. But as I grew up, I met people whose gazes were sometimes full of smiles and sometimes heavy with forgotten tears. I came to understand that beyond my own sight, the world was too vast to be taken in with a single glance.

Editing & translation assistance by ChatGPT.