It seems I have a favorite question…
What am I not seeing?
I find myself applying it in places that otherwise have little to do with one another.
It follows me into the realm of books. Into relationships. Culture. Artificial intelligence. Family. Imagination. The strange things we humans do when we are frightened. The equally strange things we do when we are certain.
I have always been interested in an unruly number of things… and I confess I am somewhat relieved to discover there may actually be a connective thread running through them.
I also like the question because it doesn't require me to abandon what I already see.
It simply allows for the possibility that I don't see everything.
This seems useful to bear in mind.
Especially given that we are not exactly living through a shortage of opinions about what is wrong with the world. There are diagnoses in every direction. Explanations. Positions. Solutions.
And increasingly, there is also a great deal of certainty about who, precisely, is causing the trouble.
Some of those diagnoses may point us in the right direction. Some do not.
And so I find myself wondering what might happen if, alongside everything we know, everything we believe, everything we are quite sure we have correctly understood, we made room for one more question.
NOT: What are *they* not seeing?
That one comes to us too easily.
INSTEAD: What am *I* not seeing?
What might become visible if we applied that question to some of the problems in our lives and in our world that seem the most impossible to solve?
This is not meant to throw a bucket of cold water on our convictions. Or on our expertise. Or on our discernment. Or on the legitimate calls to action a given problem arrives with. Nor is this an invitation to endlessly reconsider what we know in our minds, hearts, and souls to be true.
It’s simply about allowing ourselves to look again… and to look more closely.
Just a slight turn of the head.
Undertaken with the willingness to entertain the possibility that reality may contain something our present angle of vision does not.
I don't know what we would see…
Which, come to think of it, is the point.
It’s a question that is meant to remain open and that begs for no specific answer… And it’s the question that I find myself carrying around with me.
What am I not seeing?
I thought I would pass it along to you.
🗝️🌀
Love + Oneness,
Naomi
