Teaching myself to look without judgement has changed my life because everything is now so fresh and interesting – shadows, smells, sounds, colours, angles or emotions find their way into my periphery, and I can notice, observe and appreciate without personalising them. How, when you are carrying a catalogue of infinite comparisons to draw from, could you possibly be open to the unique essence of a place? The instant I liken a fountain to another I may have seen irl or online, I remove myself from the present location. If I look at a tree and think about its size, I’m making a value opinion (“that’s quite tall” – compared to what? a small tree somewhere else?). If I even so simply pass a thought at what another person is doing, I am losing touch with the possibility of an authentic experience that may stick with me, and instead be glued to an image of something inconsequential.
This way of looking prevents us from enjoying ourselves, definitely, moreover it creates a reality that centres us as an atomised individual, incapable of sinking into the collective conscience. I’ve come to understand the desire to make comparisons with extreme opposites as a negative thinking style, not too dissimilar from ‘grass is always greener’. It must derive from scarcity thinking, imagining you’re being short-changed as a consumer, except the product you are investing in is an idealised place that exists entirely separately from and also concurrently with the real space.
In searching for a main event full of superlatives, we surrender the opportunity to feel the vibrations of the ubiquitous reality; the positioning of the body in the place without an I.
Never satisfied we are never satisfied we are never satisfied we are never satisfied we are never satisfied we are never satisfied we are never satisfied we are never satisfied are we?