The Look

I can appreciate (and perhaps count) the times when I was given “the look” by someone I either worked with, was partnered with, or was a parent of. We all know what it is: that specific head tilt, the glint of an eye, and the general “what did you just say?” position of lips on the face. Absent of lips, I’m pretty sure this great cormorant was giving me “the look” as I captured it just off the north cliffs of Prince Edward Island.

These moments serve as not-so-subtle reminders that what we’re saying or embarking on is perhaps not a sustainable outcome for our well-being. It’s almost like these look-givers know something, feel something, and embody something we should be paying attention to. As someone who’s been on the giving and receiving end of such, I’m pretty sure what I’m saying is true.

When we listen with our whole selves to what others reflect back to us, in words, nonverbals, and otherwise, we’re relying on the wisdom of our collective to head off the actions or beliefs that don’t lead to success. When we evaluate humanity at the most basic, instinctual levels, these imperatives to thrive, propagate, and flourish are critical to our species' success. We’ve been practising these arts from time immemorial, and now that we’re more adept at using tools (digital or otherwise) as means of conveyance, we’re perhaps losing touch with the fundamentals of our analogue selves.

We also need to listen and learn from Nature herself. The looks from the foxes, cormorants, gulls, and various other creatures above, around, and beneath us tell of a great set of changes coming. They’re the harbingers of disruption, the agents loudly proclaiming a global change occurring, and we’d do well to heed their call. And yet, only a few of us seem to care enough to listen. Perhaps it’s because we don’t know how to look or cannot recognize “the look” from around us.

We’re quick to discount the various calls and cries from around us. The noises, smells, and sounds affront our delicate sensibilities. We’re more likely to tune in to the thumping harmonics of taxi tyres grinding against hot pavement than we are to warrant a second glance at the mewling of gulls around a dumpster. We’re given over to the PA announcements of the next metro arriving or the klaxon of sirens, the announcement of the next flight to some exotic locale. We love our noise, our frenetic gyrations through space and time, our insular existences amongst the widening gyre of humanity.

And yet, when we step outside these normalised existences, when we pay attention to the whooping and calling, the mewling and crying, the subtle rustling of the wind in the trees and pigeon wings, we suddenly are reminded that Nature, in all of her glory, has been giving us “the look.” We realise that the waves crashing on eroding beaches, the broken branches of trees ripped from the ground to make way for parking lots and parkades, the plastic detritus washed up on the shores of distant beaches…all these things have been warning us, all along, that we’re headed for a disaster.

I’ve been gently whacked time and time again, reminded that my “face needs fixing” by my wife. I’ve been told that my face mirrors my heart, either as kind or as ugly as the moments it finds itself in. It’s almost like the stories I’ve written here are “the look” I’ve been given, time and time again, in an effort to change my perspective, my raison d’etre, my dedication to the tiny slice of the world I’ve been given custodial charge over. 

So now, through this “look” of mine, I challenge you to change your perspective and outlook and care for what is most important. I charge you to look past the obvious to the unseen through the veil of obligation to the soft heart of agency and purpose to find what it is you’ve been missing. It may be subtle things, a change of scenery, or an escape from the doldrums of business and busyness. It may be more drastic, a change to how you’ve always walked through life. Whatever it is and may be, there is no time like the present to capture the fleeting moments of a life that could be spent doing incredible things.

May it ever be so.