Looking without Seeing

How often do you take the time to lay on your back and look up? I don’t mean “look up” in the sense of “Oh, the clouds are coming in” or “The sun is burning my retinas.” I mean really looking up.

In life’s chaotic busyness, we’re inclined to glance, to permit ourselves a few seconds of indirect view, before coming back to the task in front of you. We’re given to flirtateous moments with the world at large before being challenged to return our gazes to other, more important things.

If there’s one thing that has been made clear to me over the past four decades, it’s that we take our sight for granted.

We are sensory beings, relying on our faculties to incorporate the various stimuli in and around us into a single narrative of collective impulses. Our sense of smell is connected to our taste and our sight informs the expectation of texture. Our touch constructs the realities of our surroundings and our hearing becomes our radar and beacon. The marvel of all these interconnected senses is in both the stories they weave together and in their ability to compensate when one or another is unavailable or perhaps minimized.