Heroes Not Zombies

I looked up and noticed this lady leaning on the rail of her balcony on the top floor of the building.

She was watching the world go by. Or so it seemed to me. She could, of course, be looking out for someone in particular, waiting expectantly for their arrival, but even then she seemed to be watching the world go by in the meantime.

I immediately thought of my gran. I was born in her house, and spent my childhood living in the first floor flat above her. It was a corner house and her flat had two large rooms, each with a bay window, one facing one street, and the other “round the corner” facing another.

My gran liked to sit in one of these bay windows “watching the world go by”. One of these rooms was a bedroom and the other a sitting room. I could return from school and find she’d swapped the furniture around during the day making the bedroom, the sitting room, and vice versa, “for a change of view”.

Watching the world go by is an exercise in observation. We do it to practice noticing, and to enhance our awareness. It’s almost a meditation practice. It’s certainly a type of contemplation where we strengthen our recognition of the familiar, and, consequently, the unfamiliar, quickly noticing what’s new, what’s different.

Surely this lies at the heart of our powers of perception – the ability to recognise the familiar AND the ability to spot differences.

Where are your favourite places to “watch the world go by”?