Reflection 36: Seeing instead of simply looking

 One of the curious things about people is they spend most of their time looking and very little time seeing. I mean really seeing. I tell this to my students in every new computer class that I teach. As a case in point, I ask the attendees if they were aware of the white butterfly on the desktop screen of Microsoft Windows. I don’t need to ask for a show of hands because I can tell by the expressions on their collective faces that most if not all have not. Try it yourself. Perhaps surprise yourself. Many of us have been using Microsoft for years. No butterfly, until now. Interesting. People simply look.

 When one loses the sense of sound or most of it (I am now raising my right arm), others such as sight does double-duty. 

 I recall from more than a couple of years ago in an undergraduate psychology course I took at York University, we studied a module on the senses and how they interact. I then wrote a paper on how the other senses of a person could strengthen if the individual was or became blind. I went so far in my research to contact the CNIB and interviewed a couple of volunteers who were blind. (I was a very studious first-year student.) All of this proved to be quite fascinating. 

  I have come to believe, for example, that sight has an ability to be more attuned to the world around him or her if the sense of sound fades significantly or disappears altogether. (Perhaps others as well. But I only researched sight.) This maybe is an avenue of survival. I really don't know.

 This Reflection looks at seeing instead of simply looking. Here I will be trying something a little different. I call it "active reading and visualization" in that you, dear reader participants. 

 See in your mind's eye if you will: It snowed overnight and the pre-dawn finds a beautiful white blanket everywhere. It is so beautiful in the minus 10' Celsius stillness. Standing on a wooded path my warm breath fills the air and hangs just above and out of reach. Reader, can you see and almost feel this cold stillness? I still can.

 Walking a little along the snowy path in the urban wood, I notice a brown twig with three red berries clinging as if they were too frightened to let go. They look for all the world like mistletoes, but aren't. They sport snowy caps of snow. I began to wonder what their short life was like. The aged tree they clung to is just before the bend in the path. See it? Pause beside me. Concentrate a little more. I'm sure that you will.

 Stepping back and looking at the overall scene, it appears like an image on a Christmas card. Not a card from a discount store that everyone instantly recognizes as a discount card. But a quality card that is produced specially for a special person. The scene is as they say, 'picture perfect.' I can visualize the card in my gloved hand. Can you see it? I am holding it out for you.

 Around another corner I see a small stand of young white birch trees (my favourite). At the base of one are the tracks of a passing rabbit. It is warm enough, I suppose, for the rabbit to be out and about hunting for breakfast. I see no sign of the track's owner. Just tracks.  

 Across the way I see two people dressed in dark colours trudging through the snow. They are grumbling about getting to work on time and how the snow impedes their progress. Why do people insist on wearing the darkest colours on the darkest of days? I have always wondered that. The two kept looking around and about for the path of least resistance. They obviously do not see the beauty. Perhaps they are too preoccupied with getting to work or too young. What a wonderland those two will witness if they do take the time to see. Would I take the time to see it if I was not a cancer survivor? Probably not.