Seeing through a child’s eyes
By Bianca Crapis
If you attend PSC events or read our newsletter, or otherwise engaging with climate work, is it due to a love for the earth, or maybe a love for humanity? Perhaps it’s a more specific love for your particular place, community and family. It’s a love that drives this work and a love that supports each of us to engage, over and over again, with scary potentials for the future and the deep sadness felt at this loss.
There’s a specific facet of love that I feel is what sustains love, what keeps it alive. Wonder. Awe. That experience of seeing something as if for the first time, or seeing something so beautiful it has the ability to change a previously held perception.
Wonder is something that we have in abundance as children. If you have a little one in your life, you might witness that very small children are almost perpetually in awe. Each insect, tree, flower, bird call, is a world unto itself in the eyes of a child. In that state of wonder, there is nowhere else to be and a beautiful conversation has the opportunity to blossom in that presence.
I have wandered through many of my favourite green spaces, so well trodden in my love for them and the comfort our meeting brings me, without paying more than a few moments of attention to the magical intricacies of the place. How many times have you done the same? I’ve asked myself a lot, what happens when we stop dwelling in the awesomeness of this natural world? My climate journey becomes narrowed towards “shoulds”, I notice my beliefs about how things ought to be and who should do what gets harsher, and there certainly isn’t time for slowness or pleasure.
Wondering is a skill that opens up how we think about the world and invites a deeper union with the life outside of ourselves. It encourages us to think differently. The more we practice wondering, the more we begin to think about the world with flexibility and curiosity, rather than believing that everything is fixed. This practice is an invitation for seeing a space you visit regularly through the eyes of a child. As we grow older, we are rewarded for knowing rather than wondering. This practice encourages you to play with wondering through the process of asking questions, even about things you think you already know the answer to.
Invitation to practice: choose curiosity
1. As you visit a nature space you engage with regularly, begin to notice your external surroundings. Watch as your brain might label things: tree, bird, wattle.
2. Consider what it might be like to tap into a childlike sense of curiosity. To take in the world as if for the first time and without any prior assumptions or expectations. To do this, ask questions about the natural world; what you see, smell and feel. What do you notice?
3. Consider asking questions about aspects of this place without looking for or knowing the answer. When was the last time you asked a curious question about something you thought you already knew the answer to? Maybe you ask: “Tree, how long have you been here?”, “Why is this flower pink and not yellow, or blue?”, “Do beetles have ears? What senses do beetles perceive the world with?” Watch how each question can lead to a new question. Watch as the process unfolds.
4. Consider that the natural world is as interested in you as you are in them. What questions might the natural world ask you? What parts of you might they be curious about?
5. Watch what accessing a child-like sense of wonder about a place does to your relationship to the place. Is it the same as before you started this practice? Does it bring up any memories of childhood for you? What does this practice do to your relationship with climate-oriented work?
