Looking out the window: a wonderful exercise in reflection and introspection

Looking out the window, leaving your gaze suspended on a glass is not synonymous with wasting time. Because sometimes, whoever looks through that threshold has no interest in seeing the outside world. What he seeks is to go through his reflection to navigate introspection, to reach his inner worlds in search of new possibilities. Few mental exercises can actually be healthier.

Whoever knows the work of Edward Hopper will undoubtedly remember all those works in which we are presented with a woman alone in front of a window. Sometimes it is a hotel room, other times a bed or a cafeteria… The image is always the same: a feminine gaze that seems to transcend the glass and be miles away from that small space that surrounds it.

Few enigmas have aroused so much pictorial interest. What are these women looking at? The answer is simple: nothing and everything at the same time.. Hopper was an expert at creating moods and atmospheres where he could infect us with emotions that are not easily defined. The light, the shapes, the colors, everything had to promote a certain sensation. For this reason, he often used the resource of a window near his characters.

Windows are thresholds for the human mind. Often, they are that indispensable resource for every dreamer. Also for those who need a break after a day of stress, and rest their forehead on the cold glass of a subway window. That’s when our gaze relaxes and our imagination soars. It is that moment when we begin to daydream and our brain finds relief, freedom, well-being.

Looking out the window, an exercise in introspection

In any classroom of a primary or secondary school it is easy to find a child looking out the window. They are absent, disconnected from their surroundings, but connected to their ramblings, to their daydreams. As we grow, this behavior, far from being corrected, persists eagerly. However, it is still frowned upon.. Because looking out the window is synonymous with unproductivity, it means not being present in the immediacy that surrounds us, in the responsibilities that require us.

Let’s admit it, we are rarely allowed to delve into our mental states to find out what is going on there. Because whoever does it remains immobile, generates nothing, demonstrates nothing. And that, in a results-oriented society, is little more than sacrilege. Perhaps for this reason, looking out the window is an exercise that we prefer to do alone. It is leaving your eyes on that suggestive limit that makes up a glass to look, but not see, what is happening in the outside world.

What we do is a trip in reverse. We are not interested in what is outside, because what is down there is well known to us: traffic, crowds of people, a city that carries on in its usual routine… Our brain pulls us like the anchor that is picked up from the bottom of the depths to take us out to sea.. And there, something as wonderful as it is useful for our emotional and psychological development happens.

We live in a world obsessed with productivity, we know. Perhaps for this reason, we have forgotten the enormous potential that exists in the act of daydreaming. Sometimes, the most important things, the most relevant decisions, arise in front of a window pane. It’s almost like a rebellion of our mind ordering us to do something different. It is making contact with our wisest – but hidden – self to listen to what it wants to tell us.

The crystal where we dream awake

Psychologists who are experts in the world of creativity, such as Scott Barry Kaufman and Jerome L. Singer, explain to us in an article in Psychology Today that Today daydreaming remains little more than a stigma. Anyone who chooses to look out the window for half an hour, instead of continuing to work on their computer, is lazy.

Furthermore, in a study carried out by these psychologists, It was shown that 80% of managers of companies like Adobe think that creativity is enhanced through work and continued activity. Thus, the worker who at a given moment chooses to move away from the rest to have a coffee in front of a window is someone who cannot stand the pressure, someone who is unproductive.

To this day, we continue to associate movement with performance and passivity with laziness. We must, therefore, change these perspectives, these rusty ideas. Daydreaming represents the art of tracking down hidden wonders in your own brain.. It is training the mind to expand it even further through introspection, curiosity, symbolism and imagination.

All this, all that potential hidden in each of us can be found perfectly in front of a crystal. Looking out the window at some point during the day is making an appointment with ourselves. It is crossing the threshold to that inner world that is so neglected at times. That one, that we do not attend to or nourish because the outside demands too much of us. Today’s society wants us hyperconnected, pending infinite stimuli.

Let us therefore learn to set limits and go to that crystal from time to time.. To that reflection where our dreams are contained, where we can peer into our inner beauties and a world full of infinite possibilities…

You might be interested…