Looking Closely Is Everything

There is a fine line between extracting meaning from looking closely and from imposing meaning. A sophisticated observer operates like a scientist, drawing direct and clear lines between what’s on the page and what is known and true.

Attention is the muscle. Looking closely is the application of that muscle. It can be exercised through deliberate action. Meditation is one method.

Recently, New York Times Magazine writer Sam Anderson and I spoke about how describing something well is both an act of incredible generosity and a literary challenge of the highest order.

Only untrained minds are boring. Or: Nothing in the world is bereft of delight. Looking closely helps unlock this delight, this wonder, this doofy curiosity.

Words are magic. Words are really magic. They add so much. You can take a TikTok video, and you think the TikTok video is the end in itself. You don’t need any gloss on that, but you absolutely do. It’s so much funnier if you can articulate what is embarrassing or weird or impressive about what that person is doing. That is a great hack.

What’s wild about focused attention is that the act of observation is implicitly timeless. A little dose of time travel. To look closely you must be present. And the more present you are, the more you move outside the boundaries of time.

I’d say that that huh is the foundational block of curiosity. To get good at the huh is to get good at both paying attention and nurturing compassion; if you don’t notice, you can’t give a shit. But the huh is only half the equation. You gotta go huh, alright — the “alright,” the follow-up, the openness to what comes next is where the cascade lives... See more

a well-observed thing can become all the more powerful placed in the right context, the right literary framing.

describing something well is both an act of incredible generosity and a literary challenge of the highest order.

perhaps the most radical idea of all: that every human being is worthy of attention and that the origins of every good and evil capability of the universe may be found by observing a single, even very humble, person and the turnings of his or her mind.