We See What We Describe
This is an excerpt of an article I wrote on Medium in April, 2025.
A wise person once said, “we do not describe what we see. We see what we describe.” You may also have heard the expression, “where attention goes, energy flows.” Our minds and our hearts and our bodies have incredible power to create our reality. We can choose what we consume — whether it’s food or information. We can choose to turn off the news. We can choose to redirect our attention away from what is causing us pain, and instead seek out sources of beauty or joy. We can intentionally let go of our obsession with things we can’t control.
This doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult. If a flower can break its way up through concrete, you can choose to look at that flower instead of looking at the cracks. When you do this, you are not pretending the cracks aren’t there. You are simply electing to focus on the flower.
In this great American dumpster fire of a situation we are in, it has never been more important to the preservation of our sanity and our compassion to find sources of beauty and points of connection. Even when it feels hard or pointless, or even when the list of good things seems desperately short, we can, and we must, remember the things and the people we love and the reasons to be grateful.
Staying laser focused on everything that’s wrong — with you, with other people, with the world — is a choice to embrace judgment and abandon curiosity. Much like love and fear or oil and water, judgment and curiosity each push the other away, and cannot easily coexist. Your judgment compounds whatever is less than ideal about the objective situation in the world into something massive and grim and insurmountable. What if you took a step back and considered the possibility that nothing is intrinsically “good” or “bad” and instead looked for whatever gift or opportunity may exist in what is? We see what we describe, so let’s describe more of what we want and less of what we don’t want. Let’s describe, in meticulous detail, the reality we want and intend to create for ourselves and the world around us.
Wherever you are in the world, if you have the ability to be reading this article (and I understand that in itself implies a certain level of privilege), I bet most of you can access at least one of these:
- Three slow deep breaths
- A nice view — of a mountain, a city skyline, a body of water, a park, a tree-lined street, a historic district of pretty houses, or a playground full of laughing children
- Something green and alive
- Another human being you could talk to
- Something you possess that you love
- A memory that brings you joy
- A piece of fresh fruit that isn’t too expensive
- Some part of your body, however small, that doesn’t hurt
- An animal — your pet, someone else’s, or a cute or funny video
- An uplifting quote or book (scripture, poetry, Calvin and Hobbes comics)
I offer this menu of opportunities because sometimes you need an easy, ready-to-eat, quick fix for your misery. Sometimes, just changing your focus away from whatever has hijacked your amygdala today and toward something that brings you joy (or gratitude or calm or hope or even just distraction) can help restore some semblance of balance to your nervous system. When your nervous system is calm, you can let go of judgment and trade it for curiosity. And when you get curious, you start asking constructive questions like “what about this situation is in my control?” “What choices could I make to achieve the best possible outcome here?” “What can I do now?” “What have I learned today?” “What do I have that IS working?”
America especially is faced right now with a handful of people who hold a great deal of money, power, and influence, and those people want to create your reality to serve them. Don’t let them do it. You are a free sovereign being with the capacity to create the reality that best serves you and your community. And, you can only do that by driving in the direction of what you love, and what you need, and what you want. Focusing on whatever you hate, whatever is hurting you, whatever you don’t want, just brings more of that into your reality. Even if it feels like you have nothing, or nearly nothing, you absolutely have something. You might even have everything you need. Start by focusing on what you have, get really curious about what possibilities might be realized with that, and go from there.