Can you see this? Can you hear this?

I recently began to meditate on these two prompts and realised as with any decent questions, how profound and important they continue to be.

“Can you see this?”

What are you seeing? Is it your elderly neighbour, a passerby, or someone closer to home?

What are they saying? Are they sending you tangible spoken clues or a signal that might be more intangible?

Now take another inhale, exhale and ask…

“Can you hear this”?

Where in life are you asking this question right now? Is it at home, in your neighbourhood or with those beautiful souls that you love? Are you offering presence or instead pre-tense to prepare how you’ll respond.

As you consider this, how are you creating the space to be aware of what’s happening around you.

Starting with sonder

One of the most powerful concepts, I’ve had the pleasure to introduced to, is that of sonder.

“The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness”.

There’s a deep humour in the fact it rhymes with wonder.

As we have flocked to online spaces, we’re endured the costly lesson of realising, that as in real life.

Only one person can take the talking stick at any one time. Now that we know this, how will we create a space for those who rarely have a voice? and what might we discover when we shift to a posture of listening instead of speaking, and learning from those stories that are not our own.

Those stories that are being told from the heads, hearts and hands of the ones who’ve never had a voice before.

In this time and space, it is a critical act to embrace the stories that have been shining a light on our best and worst days.

So we may be swept up in a grander sense of belonging, and a greater understanding around why we are here.

To allow the essential intelligence to come alive when we act in step with the grander global village.

So with that in mind, I leave you with as act of contemplating who is asking you these questions (can you see this?, can you hear this?) in this moment and the moments to come.

— MM