A Different Way of Seeing

Weekly wisdom to bring you home in 3 minutes.

A SHORT STORY

As we close out this year, I’m reminded of all the moments you and I have shared over the past year. Fifty small moments and opportunities where we were able to pause, slow down, and reflect.

Those moments were on my mind as Anastasiia and I embarked on our own adventure to Lapland, Finland, in the Arctic Circle.

There, we met Ellen, a local Sami person whose family had lived in northern Finland herding reindeer for generations. Growing up, she lived in a village of 12 people that consisted mostly of her family.

As we sat in a cabin after seeing the Northern Lights, she shared a story of how a pair of binoculars served as a window to the outside world for her and her sister. Since they didn’t have TV, they were forced to entertain themselves by seeing the world in a different way.

She then explained how that hunger led her to the next biggest village, then to college in the city, and eventually to over 30 countries around the world. She shared how she went to Shanghai to understand a different way of living, and I shared how I went to the countryside in Mongolia to also experience life in a different way.

Later that night, I kept thinking about that image. Two sisters. A quiet village. A pair of binoculars pointed outward.

As this year closes, I find myself wondering if these weekly pauses have been our own pair of binoculars. Fifty small chances to look again at our lives. Not to escape them, but to see them more clearly. And to ask, gently and honestly, what we might still choose to do with this one wild and precious life.

If you slowed down a little this week, what might come into clearer focus?

A POEM

“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Grateful,

Michael