Once You See It, You Can't Unsee It!

“Look at the tail on that one!” a man in the crowd exclaims. I snicker quietly (seriously, how old am I?!), and take in the view.

Our family is sitting in an open field in Door County, Wisconsin watching some epic meteor showers. We are at one of the 50 Dark Sky Parks in the world and the view is spectacular! It’s a bit of a production finding a place in the dark but once settled, we are speechless. I see all of the stars I’ve seen before and a whole lot more. Plus the Milky Way is in clear view and there are shooting stars at regular intervals.

How can this be here all of the time and yet so much of it remain invisible?

Every night the Milky Way and stars are out for our viewing pleasure but very rarely do we:

Take the time to soak in their beauty
Have a dark enough place (sans light pollution) to take it all in
Study enough to know what to look for–i.e. constellations (where is Orion’s belt again?)

Do you remember the classic optical illusion of the lady or a witch?

If you stare long enough you can see the face of a witch or of a lady with her head turned wearing a hat with a feather.

I am reminded of this exercise and of how much changes when you take the time to really see things.

When I first began studying body language, I had similar moments when I could see things that I previously hadn’t before such as:

Seeing anger, fake happiness, disgust, and contempt microexpressions; they seemed so obvious when I knew what to look for
High power and low power poses becoming glaringly obvious
And observing feet and gleaning information by noting what direction they were pointing at…

Once you know what to look for, it’s hard to unsee it! This goes for body language and for most areas of interest in general. The more you know, the more you can’t unsee.