Invitations for Awakening
Rethinking the Familiar
"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."
Mary Oliver
The world is full of opportunities for awakening: a shared glance with a stranger, a message that makes us pause and question, an unexpected communion with nature… these are all invitations to open the doors of our perception, and they are delightful.
Yet most of us miss them. The mind loves to busy itself and often overlooks the gifts at the edges of its attention. We live primarily for the future, sometimes in the past, and only impatiently in a narrow present.
But what if we practiced a kind of suspension? What if we made room - just wide enough - for the tender instances to land and linger a little longer?
Waking up to life doesn’t require much from us; it asks only that we notice what’s already there. Like raking the leaves to reveal the ground beneath them, clearing space helps awareness find its footing - we just have to let it in.
So, let’s do it. Here are three everyday exercises (and a handful of new words1) to create little intermissions and encourage a wider vision.
Invitations for Awakening
Strangers
Differences
Nature
Afterword: Brief Immersion
Strangers
“Out of My Window” Series, Istanbul, Gail Albert Halaban 2012
Everyone around us, from those closest to us to those we meet only in passing, holds within them a full narrative - a complex and vivid story that continuously unfolds, and yet, to us, remains mostly unseen.
The cashier at the register, the hurried driver on the freeway, the elderly neighbor you greet but barely know - each one of them is living a life as vast and mosaic as our own. Their world is full of people they care for, dreams they pursue, challenges they face, and memories their minds swim around in.
When we look at others with a sensitivity to this, we see them differently. Patience grows, curiosity blossoms, and judgment softens. We realize that we’re all part of a collective theater, where each of us plays our own starring role and appears only briefly as a quiet extra in someone else’s production.
The next time you’re walking through a store, eating at a restaurant or sitting down on your favorite park bench, pick out someone you don't know and pause to consider their humanity - the unseen hopes, setbacks and histories that make up their hidden reality.
In this small act of empathy, you may find your own life expanding, enriched by the private universes that run parallel to yours.
“Out of My Window” Series, Paris, Gail Albert Halaban 2012
Differences
School of Fontainebleu, Cy Twombly 1960
The world doesn’t always align with our tastes and preferences. We hear opinions that contradict our own, find ourselves in settings that feel uncomfortable, and encounter things that don’t fit our personal sense of order. Yet these small inconveniences hold the potential to open us up, nudging us toward greater tolerance and understanding.
Take street art for example: it always pulls me in two directions. Part of me resists the grunge - the no-good scrawls scattered across city walls - while another appreciates its rawness. There’s an honesty in the expression, a truth that isn’t concerned with dressing itself up for my approval.
Of course, a Banksy or carefully composed mural is easier to welcome than a batch of hurried squiggles, but that’s not the point. The gift of street art - and almost anything we react against - is its invitation to loosen our grip and remember that not everything is meant to please us. There’s a freedom in seeing life as it is: messy, unreasonable, rough around the edges, but real - and more meaningful because of it.
The mind is wonderfully flexible in its ability to shift perspectives. The next time you pass by some urban tags or experience something that unsettles you, try using it as a cue to suspend your judgment and let things be as they are, even if only for a moment.
In doing so, you might taste the high of maintaining perspective and composure - a state of mind that’s unburdened, relaxed, steady, and cool.
Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), Kyiv, Banksy 2022
Nature
Close Up, Caitanya 2007
Let’s close with something that doesn’t involve any mental gymnastics - just a little space and willingness to savor: the splendor of the natural world.
“There are so many things that lie unnoticed but possess huge charm: an earthworm, lichen growing on old stone walls, the small whirlpools on a fast-moving brook… We have been, and continue to be, profoundly unfair to the real attractions of much that surrounds us.”2
I, for one, am especially drawn to the details. I think there’s a magic to getting lost in them:
the veins on a leaf
the spongy texture of moss
the feathered edges of clouds at dawn
the rise and fall of hills in the distance
the patterned bark on old trees
Each small marvel is an entry point into something larger, and when we allow ourselves be taken in by them, they offer us something rare: a sense of time that moves with the slower, steady pulse of the living earth.
We can’t help but arrive at a gentler way of being, where we stop pushing forward and instead fall back, letting our senses fully settle. Our awareness stretches beyond its usual borders, and we find ourselves unhurried, undistracted, and firmly held in the simplicity of now.
The next time you’re outdoors, let nature guide you: pause by the river, watch sunlight spill through the branches, rub your fingers on the waxy petals of a wildflower. Soak in the moment for its own sake and find an undercurrent of gratitude for the ordinary.
In nature, there’s always a quiet wisdom to be received - a wordless meditation on what it truly means to be alive.
The Bonaventure Pine, Paul Signac 1893
Afterword: Brief Immersion
Life comes with responsibilities to manage, and we can’t spend it lingering in amazement. My only suggestion is that we make room for small doses of wonder - simple, brief moments where we’re open to the world around us.
There’s no need for constant observation; a balanced approach is enough. With a few mindful pauses here and there, we can touch a sense of awe that refuels us and reminds us that life is rich, textured, and ready to be noticed.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:
sonder (noun): the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own
liberosis (noun): the desire to care less about things; to figure out a way to relax your grip on life and hold it more loosely and playfully
ambedo (noun): a trance-like state in which one becomes absorbed in vivid sensory details, often creating a feeling of melancholic appreciation
The Wisdom of Nature, The School of Life