The World Is Made Of Precious Details That Deserve To Be Appreciated
There are those who look but do not see, there are those who hear but do not listen and those who touch but do not feel. That is why I prefer someone who knows how to appreciate the valuable details and subtleties of life, who puts will in it and knows how to contemplate me to the depths of my being without the need for a passport. Because whoever combines intentionality with sincere emotion enjoys much more.
Anthropologists and psychologists say that observation has always been the key to survival in the human being. However, we have reached a point in our evolution where if there is something that defines us, it is precisely the distraction. We are, each in our own way, that hyperventilated society that lives pending a thousand stimuli at the same time, that ignores the senses but at the same time cannot bear them asleep. We want to cover everything without even perceiving what or who we have in front of us.
Experts tell us that if we had not been good observers in the past, we probably would have disappeared as a species. Our ancestors used the full potential of their senses to intuit any risk, threat or stimulus from which they could derive some benefit. We tuned our hearing, sight and smell to capture every detail of our environment … Nothing escaped us.
However, at the present time most of us have become lazy observers, the kind for whom neither acoustic nor visual signals are enough to make us look up as we cross a zebra crossing. Not only are we failing to perceive the dangers, but some of us
The good observer goes beyond the simple details
Valuable details are like little boxes hidden in our reality where certain and admirable information is stored. A gesture, a look, a tone of voice, a change in light, a tilted painting, an insect that drinks water from a drop of dew … All these are subtleties that inhabit our field of vision and that we do not always appreciate. Perhaps due to lack of will, perhaps due to lack of time.
It is also necessary to remember that “seeing is not the same as looking.” To understand it better, let’s look for a moment at the painting by Edward Hopper that we have above. There will be those who simply focus their eyes on the work for a few seconds without appreciating anything, without noticing anything. Others, on the other hand, will look intentionally to decide what to see, to capture the soul of the painting, to read its valuable details, and even more, they will “contemplate” it to the point of personalizing themselves in one of those figures.
The good observer, the one who transcends beyond reality, will undoubtedly perceive the subtle enigma that Hopper wanted to convey with this work. We see two women in a restaurant, but above all we are disturbed by their similarities and the gesture of the one in front of us. The reason? The young woman before her is her Doppelgänger , her double, her “other self”.
On the other hand, it is interesting to know that in the enneagram test we also have the “observer” personality, who is defined as a curious, innovative person, capable of distancing himself from things to make his own judgments. They are also independent, simple and very insightful profiles.
The world is made of precious details that deserve to be admired
In our current society we see but we do not look. We slide our finger across the screen of our mobile phones in a routine, mechanical, sometimes obsessive act. We sit in front of the television and often we just watch everything they throw at us. The same thing happens sometimes with our existence, we see and breathe but we do not live, not at least in the way we really could: with the most attentive eyes and the most receptive heart.
One of the most interesting books on this same subject and that undoubtedly invites us to reflect is “Listening with the eyes” by Ferrán Ramón Cortés. The argument could not be simpler: a man suddenly sees how one of his most valuable co-workers leaves the job. The protagonist does not understand the reason and realizes that despite having shared 5 years of profession with her, he does not know her.
After this he decides to improve social skills. He decides to take photography and learn to look at the objective to understand its reality much better, to capture the detail, to transcend, to know how to contemplate and reach people with authenticity, taking out one by one all those “layers of onion” that surround to our behaviors and to our own everyday environments.
To conclude, something that we have been able to understand is that all of us can choose two options in our day-to-day life: see life or look in detail at that reality of which, to be a full participant. Furthermore , there is a third, more enriching option, but one that undoubtedly requires more time and will. We undoubtedly speak of the ability to “contemplate ” our reality, to touch the soul of things and immerse ourselves in its multiple mysteries and enigmas, such as the two paintings by Edward Hopper that illustrate this article.
