Not the same old way

A funny and really smart buddy of mine, Tom Hornack, once told me a story about an Indian "tracker" who taught a white friend of his how to "read" the land. The key to close observation is...big surprise here...to actually look around. But the point, said the Indian, is that too many people simply do not know how to look about oneself. For instance, while walking on a path most people look left and right, but their vision is always eyes-high. They don't crouch, look up, move a bit off the track—simple things. To really see we need to look at things from more than one perspective, to force oneself also not to block out what one ordinarily blocks out, and to make visible which, for most purposes, is typically invisible to oneself. That’s part of the reason why when we enter a person’s house we instantly notice all manner of things the homeowner has not noticed or, more likely, once noticed but has now “forgotten.”