I have to comprehend things deeply. I need to take the time to see them inside out. I crave a deeper understanding of life and all things in it. People. Places. Ideas. Art. Nature. I yearn to love them all; and this is my way of falling in love. First by fully seeing, by truly knowing them.

This can be a gift, and it can be a curse; because to truly know anything takes time. And time in this world is so rushed.

Things seem to trample over each other in a steady procession of attention demands. Like a circus where the acts have all been triple-booked and each has far too much embellishment, the world feels at once overwhelming and incredibly dull when I am not given adequate time and space to delve into any one thing, for the cacophony of twelve others screaming for the next act.

I think this is why I so adore nature, art, reading, writing, animals, children, silence, and divergents of all different angles.

They are what they are. They don’t pile on frills and makeup and backgrounds, and they don’t feast on your attention like mosquitos in a Florida summer.

Instead, they just are. And all they ask is that you are too. They ask one thing loud and clear. Be with me, as I am here with you.

These things give me a sense of giving and receiving. Observing and revealing. Seeing and being seen in return.

I suppose that’s also why I tend to prefer older art to more modern takes. Because it speaks without asking, without begging or competing or demanding anything of itself or the observer, like so much of the modern world seems to do.

It just is.

As they all just are.

As I am, while I explore the thousand layers of a tree leaf, or hundred shades of a personality, the decades of stories in a short poem, or the endless lives of an ocean wave.

I want to see. I want to understand. I long to love. As much as I can. For as long as I can.

©️ 2025 Cristen Writes