Who are you looking at? What are you looking at? Where are you looking at? Why are you looking at that? Are you concentrating?
Echoes of primary school days and being jolted back from some reverie or another. Yes, these are sometimes accusatory questions from kindergarten to the grave. And at times they’re questions too frequently voiced by persons so enthralled by themselves and by their own stories that they’re impatiently unable to tolerate that others have life experience – dreams, gladness, hopes, joys, longings, maladies, perspectives, relationships, sorrows, troubles – all of their own.
I’m glad to ask, in company with poets the world over, I think –
Who are you looking at?
What are you looking at?
Where are you looking at?
Why are you looking at that?
– but with an open and expectant heart.
To Look at Any Thing
To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,
‘I have seen spring in these
Woods,’ will not do – you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferry plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from.John Moffit
Know that thing …
wind in my wheels 🌱 
Hi windinmywheels, Thanks for writing this… I really connected with this post…”what are you looking at”….My thing is urban sketching and it is honestly only when I stop and look with total focus at an object/person/building that I begin to see the beauty of the universe….my brain is usually so keen to rush on to the next idea that I miss what’s right in front…texture, colour, form, feeling….
Keep up the thought provoking writing 🙂
LikeLike