Seeing Anew

Notre Dame de Paris, 2025

“Wherever you go becomes part of you somehow.” — Anita Desai

I had a moment recently - standing within the restored Notre Dame in Paris - that reminded me how deeply our seeing changes over time.

I’ve visited that building many times, but this time felt different.

Images of the fire, the years of reconstruction, and the collective will that brought it back - all seemed present at once.

Experiencing the familiar through new eyes can be unsettling.

It asks us to let go of the story we’ve been telling ourselves about the world as we know it – and who we are in it.

We do this in leadership and in life all the time - walking past the same conversations, the same patterns of thinking, certain we’ve already “seen” and “heard.”

But awareness transforms what we perceive.

Once we truly notice, we can’t return to the unexamined view.

That moment in Paris was a quiet invitation:

to keep noticing, to keep allowing experience to reshape perception.

It reminded me that becoming is not about adding more, but about seeing what is already here with fresh eyes -

and allowing new meaning to find form in us.

Seeing anew is how the future enters the room.