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“… instead of seeking new landscapes, develop new eyes.”

Marcel Proust

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There are probably a zillion interpretations of this thought, but here is mine.

I am a nomad. In part it is because I am a roaming soul seeking new landscapes. Ok. Maybe I am just restless and comfortable with a general sense of impermanence. All of which make me sit back and wonder why.

In part because it is quite possible I fear if I stay in one place too long I just don’t have the ability to see things with new eyes. A fear that all the colors I loved in the beginning will simply fade to grays.

In part because it is quite possible I haven’t found a person or a reason to not be a nomad.

Now. All of those things I mention remain reasons why I envy my friends who are really happy people and not constantly moving (physically). They have had the ability to find a home and love it as much year to year because each year they find something new to love. And they also love the parallel comfort in what they fondly call home.

So somehow someway they have found both comfort & newness (yahoo ! … a contradiction I can love).

Just because they are ‘not roaming’ physically, they are not stale in any way. Their home is not tiresome or bland in any way.

In similar ways I am envious of my friends in long term marriages and relationships.

They don’t seek new landscapes. It seems each year. Each month. And for some each day. They look at the one they love with new eyes seeing not what they were but who they have become.

As well as whom they are. And constantly find new ways to be comforted in the comfort of their relationship and yet see the relationship with new eyes. And because of their ability to look with new eyes their love gets stronger in some ways and it also (I think) helps them bridge the tough times that anything that stays together for long periods of time inevitably face.

Regeadless of how you want to view what I just wrote I would point out this is an ability. Maybe not a skill but certainly a Life ability – remain in ‘one place’ and , yet, have the ability to see it as “many places.”

Anyway. Then I came across something a 20something wrote on their site:

I am home now with the heart full with the dear friends with whom I travelled both physically and mentally. I am home and do not want to let go of the momentum, the openness, and the opportunity to touch others the way they touched me. I am home. Smiling. Warm by those I met and the ones I am still to know. Never so fully aware of the importance of touching and keeping in touch. But how can I explain this attraction for things that are just there, seemingly without purpose, or for those so alive and that so effortlessly stitch themselves to the heart?
For me, there is wholesomeness in the connection to the organic and to the silent life of things, to the fabric of being, all color or the fading of it, the unknown story.

I thought it was well written and captured the essence of the Proust quote. Developing new eyes isn’t just what you can see, but it is the ‘connection to the organic and the silent life of things.”

Maybe that is the inherent ability to be able to not be a nomad and still see things as fresh.

Well. Living life is not a formula. That is for sure.

But what Proust suggests is you can avoid feeling stagnant without feeling restless or have to seek new landscapes.

Be restless in stillness.

It is probably more difficult to do than simply typing it like I just did.

But I also imagine that if we just looked a little closer at things around us … and I mean REALLY looked … you would see something new every time you looked. And still, if it is important to you, you have the comfort of standing in a place you know and love.

Man oh man. When I write something like that I have to ask my self: what is better than having comfort and new all at the same time? It’s kind like finding the optimal newness in Life. That is what good ole Marcel suggests we can all do … if we look with fresh eyes and look anew at what we already have.

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Written by Bruce