Omens

We are bombarded with information in our daily lives—a relentless flood of sights, sounds, and sensations. Yet the majority gets filtered out by our cognitive processes, leaving only what is deemed essential. But we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the details.

Dialing back our filters and paying closer attention to what we would typically regard as trivial can reveal truths about ourselves and the world around us. The way the water ripples in the canal, the notes in the birds’ morning song, the texture of your sheets before drifting off—each has something to tell us if we choose to listen.

Paulo Coelho said it best in his novel The Alchemist, “He knew that any given thing on the face of the earth could reveal the history of all things… whatever the thing observed, one could find a connection to his own experience of the moment.” The key, then, is not in being more receptive to our external environment, but in being more attuned to our internal environment. Omens lie not in the observed things themselves, but in our relationship to them.

The observer effect is an idea in quantum physics that observing a system or phenomenon changes it. In the famous double-slit experiment, electrons behaved as particles when observed, yet as waves when unobserved. Reality lies not only in action but perception. Without the observer, a ripple in the canal is just that, and nothing more.

Through external channels, we speak to ourselves. We already have wisdom within us, it’s just a matter of allowing our environment to awaken it. Omens are everywhere, all the time. Can you hear them? If not, pay closer attention. If so, are you really listening?