To see, and not to see

I once went on a walking meditation with my yoga teacher training group along a pebbled beach in Costa Rica. We scattered in our own directions and I walked off slowly, attempting to feel each surface of my bare feet make contact with the earth. My head was cast downward, an ear poised to take in the sound of crashing waves. My eyes also looked down, not scanning but not exactly staring vacantly into regions of the rocky and shelled expanse. I began to detect subtle movement below me. Letting my gaze linger in a spot revealed seemingly thousands of tiny crabs, bustling along in their shells.

I was amazed how from a macroscopic point of view this shore surface appeared still and sparse of life when in actuality there was a dynamic existence. I suppose the crabs moved only as I approached, sensing the vibration of my steps. For as I walked by they shuffled then shortly after, returned to stillness. I felt like a cartoon character that nervously walks a museum, convinced that the eyes of the portraits follow them.

I began to wonder about the things in our own existence that go unnoticed..phenomena in nature, subtle characteristics and changes over time in places, and in people..It occurred to me how dependent reality is upon perception. What is experienced in any given day depends largely on perspective.

Just as switching from a macroscopic to microscopic view altered my experience at the beach that day, it molds my daily reality. An eye for intricacy has allowed me to find beauty where I might not have otherwise seen it. Conversely, being lost in detail has led me to see ugliness. When I was an adolescent I had an odd habit of looking at a feature of my face in the mirror, usually my nose, and staring at it to the point of being horrified at its relative size. I only understand now that the most beautiful nose of the most beautiful person can be grotesque if you stare closely enough at it, or long enough at it.

Can I train this lens to zoom in and out to produce a representation of reality that is nothing but beauty?

I ask myself this as tomorrow I leave for Istanbul, where I lived for a year and struggled with an unhealthy perspective to the attention I received being a foreign, black woman. Clearly, had the experience been only negative that city would not keep calling me back. However I do still become anxious when I think of returning. It’s becoming clearer that whether Turkish or foreign, man or woman, people just stare. But in the past I felt the world was looking only at me with careful inspection, or with awe like a squeamish person that is nonetheless captivated by a surgery on television. This mind trained itself to see every look, and interpret it as negative although it may stem from harmless curiosity.

What would happen if I removed the inconsequential from my field of vision? Would what I choose not to see disappear?