Seeing beyond surface appearances.

“When your eyes are tired, the world becomes tired too,”

John Burnside.

A simple truth that reveals how profoundly our inner condition shapes what we see. If we leave our ways of seeing unattended, unconsidered, like windows left uncleaned, the world outside begins to change, or so it seems. Over time, as dust and grime accumulate, what was once a bright and beautiful scene grows dull and unappealing. The window remains the same, as does the view. The only difference is the obscuring layer that has settled between them.

Our states of mind and the physiology they invoke are no different. The stresses and strains we collect, the fears and fatigue we carry, form layers upon layers that cloud our perception. This mental grime fabricates a story we begin to believe, a narrative of limitation, separation, or dissatisfaction. Told often enough, it becomes a truth we live by, keeping us at arm’s length from the fullness and brightness our lives naturally contain.

This accretion distorts our view of the present moment, colouring it with the residue of the past, the shadow of anxieties yet to come. Thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations are all filtered through this ever-thickening lens, leaving us unsteady and insecure, as if life itself were insubstantial or out of reach.

But the act of closing our eyes, stepping inward, offers us a powerful form of housekeeping. In stillness, we can begin to clear these layers, to restore the natural clarity that was never truly lost but simply hidden. With each moment of quiet, we wipe away a little more of the dirt, reclaiming the lucidity and steadiness that allow us to meet life as it is, fresh and undistorted.

This isn’t about creating something new; it’s about revealing what has always been there. Like uncovering a view beyond a clouded window, this brightness doesn’t belong to us but welcomes us as we are. The more we tend to this inner clarity, the deeper the sense of well-being it brings, an unforced friendship with the world, an intimacy with the moment as it arrives.

To pause and attend to the view through our inner window is not a retreat but a return. It allows us to see, with startling vividness, the life that was always waiting: full, bright, and unfiltered.

Photo taken in an abandoned schoolhouse in Galicia , Spain