We had known each other for a week or two. Or at least, since our first meeting. I didn't want to count the days I spent with them, or simply count the days up since our first meeting. I knew that if something should happened, then, strangely, my brain would give me the exact number of the duration of our relation. If today you could call the thing between us a relationship. 

I was aware that we had known each other for too little time, but I remembered that with each new meeting, I had already learnt a lot of things about my new acquaintance on the very day of our meeting, that I knew about them in several days. To tell the truth, I knew nothing about them, perhaps except their first name, and even then it had been hard to make them say it. They were shy, there was no doubt about it, but to have difficulty revealing just their first name to me had seemed odd to me. Maybe it was the fear of taking something from them that I could never give back. Because it was true, when we said our first name to a stranger, what happened next? Would that be a good or bad omen? Why did our parents always tell us never to talk to strangers or tell them our identity? So that nothing happens that would make us regret our words. But I wasn't the bad boy, at least, I hoped that wasn't something that showed on my face. Besides, when we first met, hadn't I shown enough that they could trust me? Otherwise, why would they tell me where I could find them if I wanted to see them again? I had so many questions in my head that I wanted to ask them so bad to them. The problem was that I already had the answers to my questions. Admit them to myself, it wasn't possible. Knowing them from their mouth would perhaps be too painful. Yet there I was, sitting beside them on the edge of the roof where I had met them. Our legs were hanging in the emptiness and we were staring straight ahead. The weather was nice. Well what was left of it. It had been a very sunny day. The sun slowly began to set behind the mountain peaks. The landscape was magnificent and I understood why they loved clumping up here. Like the first time I put a foot on this rooftop, a magical atmosphere enveloped me. I had felt so free, so light, that I had thought I could fly away. Today I felt it again. I felt it every time I clumped up here. As always, sitting next to them, staring into the distance, I couldn't help glancing at them. All our meetings were -almost- in silence. No words ever came out of their mouth or mine (except when the silence made me nauseous and just hearing the sound of my own voice calmed me and took away this feeling of sickness). Even though I didn't like silence, this one was soothing. In a way, it allowed me to put myself in my world, to free myself from the constraints of my daily life, to weigh the pros and cons. It helped me to review everything. Of course, that didn't allow me to know them, but what I had learnt by being in a very difficult and strict environment was that patience was a great virtue. Certainly the most requested and the one given to those who really deserved it. So I will wait. It didn't matter how long it would take. Didn't I have plenty of time?

"There's one thing in this world that I hate and that I will never understand. And I keep wondering: why does it exist?" They suddenly broke the silence, frowing.

"And what is this thing?"

"You know, I don't understand why some people always have to be right. They are around you saying you don't have the right to think this or that way. You just have to think like them. Whenever you talk to them, no matter what you tell them, they will always know how to put you down and make you feel ashamed of yourself, so you just stop talking. Those persons are the ones you think they can understand anything, are open-minded and you think you can talk to them about anything. But it's like staring at an illusion and never realizing that it's just a big joke. And I don't know why, but I always meet that kind of person. As if it were a bad joke that life was playing on me. And I'm so upset right now, because those persons never let anyone speak their mind."

"Hold on, who are you talking about? Me?" I cut them off abruptly.

"No! No, of course not." They turned a friendly look towards me. "I'm talking about people in general, college students."

"You're in college?" I asked them, surprised. "What are you studying?"

"Yes I am. Law. But this is not the subject. I was saying that it made me angry, because everyone has something to say and those persons prevent them from expressing themselves. I'm not saying those persons aren't nice, but the way they think is simply annoying."

"Why?"

"Because it will always be "Me, myself and I" and nothing else. When, one day, they want and manage to listen to you, you feel so alone because you know you are talking to a wall. Because you know that when you stop talking, they will always have this word, sentence to make you understand that you are just a loser. I dream to see humanity evolve, to stop seeing those persons on the streets and all around the world, but I do know that what I'm asking is way too much for anyone above us, up there in the sky, and well beyond the clouds. I know I can pray as much as I want, but my prayers will not be heard. I know that those persons will always live, yesterday, today or tomorrow. They will never die. I just want to cry just by thinking about that, because with those persons you lose hope, your bravery, your strength. Because of what they say, you realize through their words, their eyes, that maybe they aren't wrong after all and that you're just telling yourself stories. That's awful to think that way, but no one can change anything. Who can anyway?"

"Us. If those Know-It-Alls, who are selfish, people who feel superior, only those who are aware of what is really going on around them can make them change their minds."

"And if they can't?"

"Then what do you think those Know-It-Alls do to people like you?"

"They put ideas in your head."

"And you shouldn't let them do it, to let those ideas affect you." I smiled at them.

They looked up. Their eyebrows were one now. They had to think so much, that if it was possible, their brain whould explode.

"Have you ever been told that you think too much?"

"I tell it to myself too much already, but I can't help but asking myself thousands of questions!"

"I saw that," I laughed.

"You know, when I was a child, I wasn't like that. My brother was. He was the one who always asked a ton of questions. Me, I never asked for anything, or at least not every single second. It's still the case, but now I just ask them to myself instead of saying them out loud.”

"Your brother, is he older or younger than you?"

"Three years older and I can assure you that it's not easy every day," they laughed nervously.

"Things will get easier with time."

"That's what they say, but is it really true?"

"I have no idea, but if you do think so, then things will get easier with time."

They smiled at me. Sincerely. It wasn't a forced or embarrassed smile. No, it was a smile you gave to a friend when you confided in them and you saw that they understood what you wanted to say, to express.

I was pleased that they opened up so easily. I couldn't dream of better, and I will never dream of more.

"What was your favorite subject, at school?" They asked me.

"Was? Who says I'm not a student anymore?"

"You're older than me."

"Old? Can you really see it that much?! I already have wrinckles?!" I touched my face, horrified and jokingly.

"No you haven't, it's just you have a different way of speaking, of living. You're more mature."

"Because college students are not?"

"If you think that parties, drinking, smocking, sleeping around is maturity, then yes they are very mature!"

I couldn't help but laugh. They weren't wrong about that. I hadn't finished my college education, I had only done two years with the aim to graduate with a Master's degree of Managment, but I had to quickly accept a job in my father's company. I hadn't been able to refuse, one: because since I was a child, I was raised to take over the family business, and two: why refuse a high-ranking job in a multinational company and where the check exceeded five zeros? But it was true, I would have liked to know more about that life as a university student. I wish I had more fun. In two years, I had to say that I had seen things that were difficult to digest!

"So?"

"Interpersonal Relationship. I was headed for a Master's degree of Managment before I had to go and work for my father."

"What did you like in this subject?"

"The fact of knowing your client. To base yourself on psychology, body language. We learnt so many things about the other that every single lesson hypthonized me."

"It sounded great."

"It was. You would have loved it."

"It can only be true.” They smiled at me.

"And you, what's your favorite subject?"

"Philosophy."

"Seriously? Usually everyone hates it."

"Usually, they do."

They stared back at the horizon.

'Nobody likes philosophy because it makes you think. It makes you question yourself without you realizing it. It's a very disturbing thing, because you never know what you're supposed to think. They say that you have to think by yourself and yet you still have to pick a side. This is a very disapproving thing. What I like in philosophy it's not to confront ideas and to analyze them then write a conclusion which will always be an open question. I like philosophy because it allows us to see the world differently. The real world. It allows me to see the world through my own eyes, through yours and through those of any person living on Earth."

"So this isn't only a matter of thinking, if I get it well."

"That's it, this is the result between me, you and them. It's as simple as that. It's the simplest form to understand the world which is surrunding us. I used to say to myself that if you know how to see through the three eyes, then you can understand, interpret the world around you. That with this capacity you can't judge. But yet, judgment is a common characteristic of all beings and even if you do everything in your power, no one is capable of not judging. It would be too good to be true."

"So you think those who say that they never jugde anynone are lying, right?"

"That's right. They may not realize it, but they judge. Even though they think that it's just a justifiable comment, and therefore it doesn't hurt, they're wrong. We judge with our eyes, with our words. So maybe they don't judge with words, but the judgment done with the eyes is the worst. Philosophy is also that. We don't understand the world only through texts, words, voices but mostly because of what we see, we sense. Our eyes are the first mirrors of the interpretation and apperception of the world.”

"Saying it like that, it sounds simple, but it still won't be a thing for me!"

"It's simple if we make an effort to think it is. It's like life, it isn't easy, it only becomes so if we want it to, if we make an effort to make it so. Sometimes you don't have to look very far but just stop thinking."

"Said the one who had a mind full of questions."

"That's right!" They laughed.

They were a revolutionary. I was sure that they could have been a very influential person. They were a person who fought for their principles, the principles of others. They had been right to choose Law School. They would have been an incredible lawyer. Defend people was maybe not their vocation, but establish justice and lock injustices, mores, it was something that made them alive. They liked their fellow even if they ran away from them. They had a brillant mind and questions that needed answers filled their head. They had been wrong never to ask their questions. They had been wrong not to stand up and scream the whole truth that the world was hiding. Actually, this world needed people like them. People who had so many things to say that they weren't able to open their mouths. People to put barriers down and raise signs in the air, exposing the lies of everyone. People who laughed in your faces and who explained to you from A to Z your mistakes and your pettiness, all this in such an intelligent way that you would be lost. I still didn't know why those people hid themselves from the world. Maybe because they had too much knowledge, so talking about it brought them criticisms, judgments. They had been right to say that to understand and know the world you needed to know yourself in your own shoes, but also in those of the person right next to you, and in those of everyone. 

                                              Seeing partially the world is partially hiding from the truth.