Being Watchful........Wendell Berry

Being Watchful (Wendell Berry)

As soon as I felt a necessity to learn about the non-human world,

I wished to learn about it in a hurry. 

And then I began to learn perhaps

the most important lesson that nature had to reach me:

that I could not learn about her in a hurry.

The most important learning, that of experience,

can be neither summoned nor sought out.

The most worthy knowledge

cannot be acquired by what is known as study —

though that is necessary, and has its use.

It comes in its own good time

and in its own way to the man who will go where it lives,

and wait, and be ready,

and watch.

Hurry…. is beside the point, 

Useless…., an obstruction.

The thing is to be attentively present. 

To sit and wait is as important as to move.

Patience is as valuable as industry.

What is to be known is always there.

When it reveals itself to you, or when you come upon it,

it is by chance.

The only condition is your being there and being

watchful.