Beginning to “see” …
Education for the Future | Personal Journal & Field Experience | Aug 14, 2008 | 2 hours field work
I take a walk every morning with the 14 month old. We walk on the trail
around the lake on which we live. He ambles and stumbles along,
stopping for every pebble, dog, crow, duck, goose, leaf and person.
Lots of "Hi"s and "Bye"s are exchanged. Sometimes it feels like the
one-eighth mile distance that we cover is filled with activity
surrounding the little chap. He is always calling out loudly to someone
to say "Hi" or pointing out something I haven't noticed. We take a
leisurely half hour for this walk. It is the only time in the day I am
truly at rest, experiencing leisure.
We pause (for longer than usual) the walk about mid-way to sit in our
"secret spot". We came upon our secret spot by complete accident about
four weeks ago. It is right off the trail and takes a short
14-month-old's-hike to get to. We get down close to the water and sit
on the roots of a large tree whose trunk is now parallel to the ground
and stretches several feet over the water. The first time we reached
our spot, I was amazed at the view we got being at level with the
water. I was also struck by how cozy and cool the spot was. No wonder
so many ducks visit it.
These days when we walk to our spot,
we play the "will we see the duck" game, each time crossing our fingers
to see the ducks. We have never been disappointed so far. The first few
times we went to our spot, its beauty was apparent to me through all
the thoughts and words that were running through my head as I saw it.
This has started changing now. The chatter in my brain is seizing and I
am beginning to just 'see' the spot for what it is. It has a big tree
parallel to the ground, it is often visited by ducks, you can see
dappled sunlight reflecting off the water, it is cool, it is
comfortable, it is quiet. In seeing the spot I am beginning to notice
things I didn't before like the moss at the edge of the water or how
mainly female ducks come to the spot. The chatter in my brain has kept
me from really seeing the spot as a whole. But, that's changing now.
Frequenting the spot regularly has helped silence my mind's chatter
allowing me to just 'see' it and then to also 'feel' it. I wonder if
the same can happen with people. As I stay with the same people day in,
day out, can I let the initial judgments subside and begin to just
'see' them for who they are, not who they are trying to be, not who I
want them to be, not who they should be by someone else's standards —
just who they really are. Can this come about? I think it can, if I can
cease to want so much out of them. I don't want anything out of the
secret spot which is what is letting it emerge to me. That is not the
case with people. I want them and want something from them which
prevents me from just seeing them. I want to work on changing that.
Oh, how I like that I don't want anything from the secret spot …… so far.