Watching Things
Photo by Kym McKinnon
September 1, 2025
You know that old saying about how the watched pot never boils?
Well, it does. I know, because I’ve seen it happen many times. I love watching things do what they do without any interference from me. I love their slow progress toward a state that might be, for a human, progress, but which for them is simply their life.
The way water boils in a pan: it starts with a gentle quaking, a water restlessness. Then you notice tiny bubbles appearing on one side of the pan. The bubbles spread around the circumference, and as they do, they gain energy. More bubbles arise, fatten, and swarm into the middle of the pan. It’s as if the smaller ones are birthing them, sending them on their way. Eventually the quaking and bubbling merge, and you have boiling water.
I am not a patient person, as my friends and colleagues will readily tell you. I get annoyed with slow drivers, people who don’t know when to stop talking, and stupid interview questions, to name just a few. But I love watching things do their thing.
It’s as if you’re sneaking up on a Thing while it’s in the middle of its process. It doesn’t know you’re watching. It just goes ahead, making its way, and you get to watch something most people never see.
Other things I like to watch include:
the frost slowly melting upward from the bottom of my car windshield, revealing a widening view of my wintry house and gardencoffee seeping through the paper filter, liquid revealing grains
the moon rising. Sometimes I’ll watch the moon rise over a hill, then move a few feet closer to the hill, to where it hasn’t yet risen, and then I’ll watch it all over again.
In many of these instances, the Thing is doing what it does because I set it in motion. But then I stand back and let it, the expert, take over.
One of my favorite contemporary thinkers is Timothy Morton. They write frequently about a philosophy called Object-Oriented Ontology, which has the fetching acronym OOO. “OOO,” writes Morton in The Stuff of Life, “is about things you can’t see. It’s as if things have their own underworld.” Or, as John Donne wrote (and Morton quotes), each object “is a little world made cunningly.”
When I watch something move, I am bearing witness to it occupying its world. It’s truly fascinating.
Try it. Watch something do something without your help.
Upcoming Programs
The Four Shields of Elderhood for Women
October 20-26
Aravaipa Canyon Ranch
Winkelman, Arizona
Guides: Silvia Talavera and Trebbe Johnson
We have four places left for this wonderful program! Maybe one is yours!!
As we women ripen into the various stages of elderhood, it may be time to re-map the landscape to make room for emerging new perspectives of what it means to be an elder in today’s world. Through honoring the years of a life lived, creating new meaning and imparting our gifts in service, we move towards transformation and into a renewed vitality, creativity, and vision.