Humans are creatures thirsty for knowledge, knowing more and more makes them feel wise, but life often teases them.
In my old apartment complex, there was a famously erudite uncle, knowledgeable from Middle Eastern oil prices to political upheavals half a world away. Then one day, his wife asked: "Do you know that the bougainvillea tree in front of the door bloomed last week?". He was stunned, willing to die. It turned out that he oversaw the whole world but missed the three-square-meter garden right in front of the porch. That is the deep-rooted disease of modern times when we know too much about distant things but are ignorant of nearby things. We know by heart the story of a divorced Hollywood superstar, a billionaire buying a yacht, but we don't know that the neighbor just changed his hairstyle, his father started walking slowly, and his mother has been forgetful lately.
Once, going with an old photographer waiting for sunset at sea, when the group stared intently at the horizon, he turned his back and pointed to the child who was quietly picking shells on the sand. He said: "Everyone can see the sun, but not everyone can see the baby.
That saying stuck in my mind, because seeing is just the instinct of the eyes, while observation is the art of attention. One sees a face; the observer sees a sad look. One sees an old house; the observer sees traces of three generations. The more I experience life, the more I understand that knowledge is very important, reading books helps expand the world, but observation is what makes that world lively. Books tell us the flower season, but only observation can help us call out the name of the first flower just opened this morning; books teach us about love, loneliness, but only observation can help us realize that they are present right in our own home.
Therefore, sometimes close the book, take your eyes off the screen to look around. In a world suffocated by information, the ability to recognize what is really happening before your eyes is priceless. Because there are things that you only need to read to understand, but there are things that you have to look deeply to see, and have to live slowly to realize.
