"The great scientist, philosopher, and poet of the early nineteenth century, Johann von Goethe, applied his genius to the problem of seeing the wholeness of nature. He was intrigued to understand any phenomenon not as an isolated event, but as a consequence of its relationship to other phenomena... Goethe describes how we can move from interrogation to receptivity, being open to what is occurring, allowing ourselves to be influenced by a whole that we cannot see.."
- Margaret Wheatley, 2000. Leadership and the new Science, 2nd ed. p.141

Our vision comes to us through
windows.
I am looking at life, my own and others,
through windows.
Some are my own; some are others.
Some of the windows move and look into
other windows.
I always want to see what is
just
out
of view.

 My windows come to me through
Travel. It has exposed me
to situations, people, and places that I would have otherwise had
no knowledge of, bringing these things into the view
I see through my windows.
They would/could have been things
out of my contemplation,
beyond the realm of my reasoning. By seeing them,
they become a part of me
and a part of who I am.
I take these pieces of other things,
                                    other places,
                                     other people,
and take them with me, bring them home and
work them into myself.
They make me
who I am and influence
who I am,
who I want to be, how I see
who I am, and how I see
who others are.
They direct where I am looking.

I have become friends with people who's views and opinions
I will never understand or agree with.
I have become more and
less judgmental at the same time. I am more able
to judge what I myself believe,
and at the same time
I am less judgmental of others and their beliefs.
Being able to see and look at, even if not to agree with,
the other
is essential.
If we don't understand
each other
we will never be able to effectively
Communicate:
Between neighbors,
            between friends,
                         between strangers,
                                      between states,
                                                    between countries.
We need to be able to see and acknowledge
other that is
                                                                not us.

 Even those things beyond our sight, out of view,
that we think are so far
from our own lives,
even these things influence us.
If these things are ignored, left alone, or pushed away from us,
if there is never any effort to understand, to see,
or to find them, we are
missing the most important thing. We are
missing the links and threads that connect us
with not us,
that can lead to an understanding
of the
                                                            whole.

Is it important to see the whole (world)? - to see all lives and things as part of a greater whole? Does this whole need to always include everything? Is there a whole? Are we then saying that the people who don't have the opportunity to get this information are ignorant? - Will be less smart, less competent, and less thoughtful than us? It is imperialistic to think they must take our view that the whole picture is more important than simply their part/place in it. Is there a need to see the picture as a whole, or the whole that applies to you? If your whole existence is a small farm in Africa, and outside influences (Russian politics, a landslide in South America) do not affect you, then what is it important for you to see/be aware of these things?

The whole system is everything here. We cannot exclude humans from that. We are part of the system and cannot take ourselves out of it to examine the rest (everything else around us) to the exclusion of ourselves. We are leading ourselves to an unjustified superiority.
                 We have enormous impact
                (that we fail to acknowledge).

My outside eyes want to judge
 and tell them
NO 
do it this way, my way
but who am I to tell them what to do.
So instead I watch and
ask why
and find that their answers
make more sense than my solutions.
            I take this with me.
I bring it back with me, a new side to myself
that has become more aware of
the other,
the things in between and the things that
tie and bind us together,
separate and differentiate us
in the same world.
I become more understanding of those that I no longer judge.
I want to bring their thoughts into
my world.

 I am influenced by those (things) I cannot see.
I am touched by those (things) I cannot feel.
I ignore/focus on their existence.

 The spaces between
Elude, guide, disguise
meaning.

In a cultural, international sense, we will never be able to become part of a culture we weren't born into. I will never be a farmer in Chiapas. I will never sell fruit from a basket on my head beside the road in Ghana. I will never be a Buddhist monk in Laos. Technically, you will never be able to see the Whole as a whole because you are who you are and you can be no one else. What then, can we do? into the ground.

The sun rises quietly over silent red fields and I am
awoken
by the sound of
pouring water
as the priest's wife from the compound next door fills the
huge clay pot of water
that is            into the ground.
          sunk
I rise from the woven mat on the cement floor to thank her.
We are both embarrassed by our lack of language skills:
She speaks no English,
I speak no Ewe.
She is wearing only a piece of cloth wrapped around her waist
and is surrounded by several children of various ages
all barefoot and
covered in red dust,
wearing maybe a pair of torn shorts, a pair of ripped underwear,
possibly flip-flops.
They drift back to their compound.
The kids take their time, playing in the yard and scavenging for
empty plastic bags that my drinking water came in
that now litter my garbage pit,
to take with them.
The sun still low on the horizon, I pick up the broom and
sweep sweep sweep
            out the inside of the room,
            then take the outside broom and
sweep sweep sweep
            the compound.
It is a soothing,
comforting sound
that is echoed relentlessly
every morning. A constant.
A necessary part of life here.
The sound of brooms scratching against
cement and
worn red dirt.
Sweep sweep sweep.
             I take this with me.

While we may wish to be able to see the whole, this is an impossible feat. To see the world as an entire and single system is not something we will ever be able to do. We are biased from birth by our culture, our religion, our race, our geographical place, and countless other factors. While we may be able to widen our vision, widen the scope and extent to which we can see the whole (due mainly to how much affluence we have to be able to purchase this vision•plane tickets, a college education, books), the entire system is beyond our reach. It would require that we be able to see the world from every perspective of every person and thing in the world.

The most we can hope for is to be able to be aware that there is a whole system, and to make the extent to which we can see parts of that system greater. And maybe even more important than seeing the things that make up the whole is to see the link between these things, the tenuous strands that bind seemingly unrelated things and events together. To realize that there is a whole that is greater than the parts. For us to function as a whole, we must become more aware of the other which we can only ever see pieces of. It is the awareness of, more than the understanding of.

Where does the trash go in Ghana?
Why is it important to know?
And why did I never ask this question until last year?
Should I mind if they burn it every Wednesday in the soccer field on the edge of town, leaving you with the
acrid taste of smoke in the back of your throat as you jolt into town in the back of a tro-tro?

I am in my cheap room constructed without care,
listening through the thin walls that
fail to conceal
the prostitute's voice.
She is arguing with my neighbor.
"I don't have any more money"
                                                 he says.
Her sing-song voice, a voice unused to English
continues.
I try to focus on the papers in front of me.
I am lesson planning for my class tomorrow, where
bright eyed students
will surprise me with their knowledge
                                                             and questions.
When it is appropriate to use "prefer,"
and when they should use "rather."
I wonder about teaching English,
and what people will use it for.
The prostitute comes back with another man, her "friend"
and they continue arguing with my neighbor, who has
locked the door.
            I take this with me.

I am talking with the older English man now living in New Zealand who is married to a sweet plump Thai woman who has gone to get her glasses that she left at the Vat they just visited. They were on my bus the other day when we got stuck at an accident that blocked the winding mountain road to Luang Prabang in Laos. A few hours into our delay he had asked me where I was from, guessing Canada. He was surprised at my answer. Today, at the Palace we are standing out in the monsoon rain chatting under silver umbrellas. I am embarrassed by my lack of knowledge about world news and events. I am surprised at how he views my country, and embarrassed to be from a place that is viewed in such a manner. It is not how I see it at all.

I am walking along
the beach. It is full of local
Vietnamese people;
playing football (soccer I mean), badminton, and swimming.
There are few tourists, but I know
that the wide built up walkway
and the pristine groomed beach
still with rake marks scarring its surface
is for them.
They scarcely notice it,
as they are used to it.
             They passively assume it as a right.
Without them, however
these outsiders
coming in,
there would be no efforts
to clean this beach.
Without us
the beach would be littered with trash
as it is on so many other places we don't visit.
Why? -
           look beyond
the fact that we think they
don't have the knowledge
to realize that this is bad (that we tell them it is bad).
Look beyond the fact that no one here can afford
to pay to have their trash safely hauled away.
Look closely at
the things on the beach.
The trash, the litter.
It is plastic packages, marketed
consumer goods that have been
consumed and now empty,
are left on the beach.
Now look back,
to before these things
had been introduced to this place.
Would the beaches be covered in
a buzzing layer of trash and flies?
Our cultural influence, our
things that we have marketed
to them as a mark of
affluence/wealth/America
are now covering their beaches.
But we don't want to see them as ours.
We refuse to claim them.
It is their trash.
We ask why they leave their trash everywhere.
Not why they have so much of our trash.
I guess,
we forgot to market them our trash cans.

Something you can't put into words,
forced into sentences can never be
as powerful as the idea.

The strings that loosely tie everything together, the ones that most people miss because they are thin and brittle, like early morning spider webs you unwittingly walk through, realizing it only afterwards when you feel the slight sticky strands cling to you. Those are the strings we are looking at and walking along.

It is a made-up word for a concept that someone had, and needed to put a name to. And it is used to describe too much, all the things that people can think of to put in that category. It can be loosely tied to a way of looking at the world, a way of thinking. And when you have no other way to express what it is, you can call it this.