Seeing

The other day, after I saw that little wild duck in the park, I kept thinking about one thing.

The duck wasn't anything special, really. The pond was just an ordinary pond, the cattails ordinary cattails. And yet, in that moment, I simply felt: how beautiful, how happy.

I thought: what made me happy wasn't that the duck was rare. It was that, in that moment, I truly saw it.

Later I thought, this seems to matter more and more.

Look at how things are now. There are more and more things. Endless images on the phone, endless videos, all of it beautiful, all of it polished. Whatever you want, it seems you can get it easily.

But honestly, with all these things, I find I'm not happier. I just glance at everything and move on. However beautiful something is, once you've seen so much of it, it becomes nothing, and the heart feels little.

We seem to own more and more, and yet the things that can truly be seen, that can truly move us, grow fewer and fewer.

That day, watching the duck, my mind was thinking of nothing. Not the business, not the past, not the future. My whole self was simply there, on that little duck with the twig in its beak.

Later I understood that, in that moment, I was whole. I wasn't split into pieces, one part watching the duck, another part thinking of something else. I was fully, completely, in the present.

To be fully in the present is to be your whole self. And that moment is true joy.

The rest of the time, why do I only glance at things and move on? Because the rest of the time, I'm in pieces. My heart is cut into fragments by too many things, by information, by worries. When a person isn't whole, they can't really see, and so that joy isn't there either.

So that day, seeing that duck, that's why I was so happy.

It reminded me: making life better doesn't always mean more things. Sometimes, it's enough just to really see what we already have.

The same pond, the same duck. Some people walk past and see nothing. Some people stop, and see it, and feel: what a good day this is.

The difference isn't in the duck. It's in whether we look at it with new eyes.

This is what I want to do more and more, in my work.

I make lights, I choose beautiful things. But slowly I've come to feel that what I really want isn't to help people own more. There are already enough things.

What I want is to help people see.

To see the beauty of a lamp. To see how it lights up a home. To see that the life they're already living is, in fact, beautiful.

If something I make could help one person see their life again, with a child's eyes, even just for a moment, then I'd feel that's good enough.

There can be more and more things. But the eyes that can see beauty, those are the rarest thing of all.

— Marie, Founder of Lyfairs