Notice Without Fixing

It's one of three questions I've been carrying around since my first session. A small practice. Sitting with what I notice and not doing anything about it.

Which, for me, is the work.

If I come into your kitchen and there are dishes in the sink, I will see them. I will probably say something. Then I will probably wash them. Not because I'm keeping score, and not because I think you should have. Acts of service is how I show love, the dishes are right there, and loving you is right there too.

To most people, this reads as criticism. The comment lands before the gesture does. I've watched it happen enough times to know.

What I'm learning, slowly, is that the noticing and the fixing have been fused for so long I treat them as one motion. See the thing, name the thing, handle the thing. A single gesture I've called love.

Notice without fixing asks me to pull them apart. To let the noticing be the whole thing for a minute. The dishes in the sink. The unfolded laundry on the bed. The look on your face I'm already trying to solve.

I don't know yet what stays when I do that. Whether the love still gets through if I'm not converting it into action. Whether the noticing, on its own, can be enough.

I have a feeling it can. I have a feeling that's what people meant the times they said they didn't need me to do anything. That what they wanted was the seeing, not the solving. And that I was so busy proving the love through movement that I missed the part where they were just asking to be witnessed.

So I'm trying. I see the thing. I let it stay seen. I don't say anything yet.

The dishes can wait.

From Here,