Three Ways to Practice Seeing

Detail from textile collage, “Value Your Joy”

Dear One,

I know you’re good looking 😎, but how skilled are you at seeing?

Do you tune in to those around you?
Notice details and context?
Stop to take in beauty?

Today I chose other people’s words to explore the topic of seeing. Let’s jump in take a look. 👀

Seeing Each Other to Save Lives

From Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering:

"Until recently, when medical teams gathered to operate on a patient, studies showed that they often didn't know one another's names before starting. A 2001 Johns Hopkins study found that when members introduced themselves and shared concerns ahead of time, the likelihood of complications and deaths fell by 35 percent. Surgeons, like many of us, assumed that they shouldn't waste time going through the silly formalities of seeing and being seen for something as important as saving lives. Yet... it was when the nurses and doctors and anesthesiologists practiced good gathering principles that they felt more comfortable speaking up during surgery and offering solutions.”

My question for you: Is there a situation in your life where people would benefit from “the silly formalities of seeing and being seen”?

Seeing to Understand and to Express Yourself

From Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (4th edition):

“[T]he purpose of realistic drawing is not simply to record data, but rather to record your unique perceptions — how you personally see something and, moreover, how you understand the thing you are drawing. By slowing down and closely observing something, personal expression and comprehension occur in ways that cannot occur simply by taking a snapshot…
“Also, your style of line, choices for emphasis, and subconscious mental processes — your personality, so to speak — enter the drawing. In this way… your careful observation and depiction of your subject give the viewer both the image of your subject and an insight into you.”

My question for you: When was the last time you let yourself indulge in the slowness of close observation, of letting your mental processes show through lines and shapes (but not words) on paper?

Seeing as an Antidote to Alienation

This one comes via Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, but is a quote from Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children:

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”

Brown comments, “Even seeing things we may fail to notice on a regular basis, like a starry sky or a butterfly in the garden, can stop us in our tracks on occasion. Both awe-inspiring events and the experiences that leave us filled with wonder often make us feel small compared to our expansive universe. Small, but connected to each other and to the largeness itself.”

My question for you: Do you allow the world to inspire childlike wonder in you?
Bonus: Can you conjure awe when you feel bored, disenchanted, or alienated?

Let’s Challenge the Social Norms

I’m daring myself to put some of the lessons from these authors into practice, in the events I’m helping plan, the classes I’m teaching, and the ways I interact with other humans and the natural world. They’re small things — a shift in priorities here, a few extra minutes to build relationships there — but they are also big things. They’re part of a lifelong endeavor to cultivate meaning and connection, which never gets boring. How could it? (Over-stimulating sometimes, yes, but boring? Never!) I’ll share specific stories of these shifts in upcoming articles and podcasts, as I process all I’ve been learning this fall through teaching and coaching.

Knowing you, you’re surely disrupting the old standard ways of seeing, too. And by “old standard ways” I mean (in the scope of humanity) the very new ways that capitalism has trained us to view time as money, and to regard people, animals, and natural elements as data points to be counted and ranked in order of perceived value.

I’d love to hear how you practice being present to what is around you — and within you.

Wanna See With Your Ears?

Want to hear more? In the most recent episode of The Accidental Muralist Podcast I gave informal oral book reports* on the three titles quoted above. (Didn’t know I had a podcast? Yep, I started recording monthly episodes in early 2020. It’s one of the places I go to find my voice and investigate big topics, alone or with cool people I know. You can find it here on my website and here on Apple Podcasts.)

*I hated anything “oral” when I was in school, so it cracks me up what I do voluntarily, for fun these days. 🤓

With eyes wide open,
-Pam

P.S. If you’re considering getting one-on-one coaching in the arts of seeing, of slowing down, of tuning into your creative Self and the opportunities around you (maybe you’re a new empty nester, about to retire, or wanting a career change?), reach out and let’s talk! You can also peruse this page of my website for more info. ✨