[One Thousand Characters a Day] Such an Intellectual Walk＜5＞ - Truly Seeing

Editor's NoteWhen you feel inexplicably frustrated and depressed, when you have worries that need solving, or when you need big or small changes in your life, how about starting with a walk around your neighborhood instead of a grand trip? The world you see after a walk will surely be different from before. This is because the act of choosing, focusing, thinking, observing, and walking itself is no different from an act of reflection. The author’s intricate and intellectual world of adventure urges modern people, who are endlessly absorbed in virtual things, to walk alone and have a conversation with themselves, and to walk with someone else and share the world each has observed. Word count: 984.

When you look around your neighborhood, you realize how limited our perspective is. We are constrained by our sensory abilities, the condition of being human, and the narrow scope of our attention. Among these, at least the problem of lack of attention can be overcome. We walk the neighborhood like dogs but see different things; we walk paths like rats but are active only during mutually dormant hours. We pass by different people every day but are so caught up in the thoughts wandering in our own heads that we fail to see what they know or what they are doing.

Every neighborhood, including ours, is unbelievably packed with sights to see and sounds to hear. What helped me recognize the trivial things I had missed was not the expertise of the people who walked with me, but their interest in focusing attention. I chose as walking companions those whom I thought had the ability to enhance selective attention. In fact, those experts told me what they were seeing, but it was up to me to adjust my senses and brain to actually capture what they saw with my eyes. Once you learn the melody of focus and keep humming it, you will realize at some point that your field of vision has completely changed.

(Omitted)

Looking around, paying attention, and being faithful to the 'right now' may sound tiresome to readers. You might feel pressured as if being scolded for neglecting the present. Most of the people I walked with were experts in careful observation, yet they often blamed themselves for not paying enough attention.

Please don’t get exhausted prematurely. No one is forcing you. You have just been given an opportunity. We are products of a culture that encourages carelessness. But by reading this book to the end, or by deciding to read it, you can become a member of a new culture that values the act of looking closely. Before the eyes of an observer, an enormous stratum of things that are both trivial and magnificent reveals itself. So, look!

－Alexandra Horowitz, A Walk in the Woods of the Mind, translated by Park Dasom, Lion Books, 18,800 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.