🙏 The Same Old Walk

What Watson notices that I don’t

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” —Henry David Thoreau

Same walk. New eyes.

“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18, ESV).

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Watson and I have been walking the same one-mile circle through our Melbourne neighborhood for almost ten years. Same fire hydrant at the corner of the cul-de-sac. Same oak with the root that buckles the sidewalk. Same patch of grass near the retention pond where he drops and rolls like he’s just discovered the finest thing on earth.

Every single time, he acts like it’s brand new.

I’ve said it to him out loud, more than once. “You know you’ve sniffed that pole hundreds of times. What could possibly be different?” He doesn’t answer, obviously. He just lowers his nose and keeps reading whatever other dogs have left since yesterday. For Watson, the same route is never quite the same. Something has always changed overnight, and he intends to find it.

I wish I could say the same about myself.

There’s a house three doors past the pond where people appear once or twice a year with a pair of golden retrievers, stay a few weeks, then vanish. Snowbirds, probably. I’ve never learned their names. I could tell you their dogs are goldens and that they show up around November, which means I’ve noticed more than I realized, just the wrong things. A friend visited last month and pointed at a place on the next block. “Is that empty?” she asked. I looked where she was pointing and realized I had no idea what I was looking at. I pass it several times a week and couldn’t tell you what color the front door is.

Conan Doyle gave Sherlock Holmes a line in A Scandal in Bohemia (1891) that has stayed with me. “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.” Holmes said it to Watson, the other Watson, the one who looked at the evidence and missed what was right in front of him. My Watson, the golden retriever, puts that literary Watson to shame. His nose treats every fire hydrant like a fresh newspaper. He observes. I just see.

We spent January examining our inner lives and February bringing that attention to each other. This month, The World Before You, we look up. The question is simple and unsettling. What have we stopped noticing in the places we think we know best?

Lent began two weeks ago, and whatever your relationship with that tradition, the underlying practice fits here. During Lent, people strip things away. Fasting, simplifying, subtracting. The purpose is clarity. Remove enough distractions, and you start to see what was always there. You don’t need a church calendar for that. You need five minutes on a familiar route with slightly newer eyes.

Tomorrow morning, Watson and I will head out on that circle again. He’ll find something I’ve missed. He always does. This month, I want to try keeping up with him and notice one thing I’ve never registered before. The neighbor’s door color. The shape of a cloud over the lagoon. Which house has a flag I’ve never read.

The world has been right in front of me. I’ve just been seeing it instead of observing it.

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This article appeared in FLORIDA TODAY as My dog observes, I just see: What are you missing? | Spirituality Today.