The Lost Art of Being Seen

A Meditation on Presence, Practice, and the Visibility We Avoid

I have many talents.

I draw.

I write.

I make.

I think.

I build.

I teach.

I learn.

But a talent kept hidden becomes a lost art.

Not in its technique

but in its transmission.

Like an old joinery method, known only to your hands

but never passed on.

Like a stone garden, raked each morning with care, seen only by the moss and the wind.

For years, I believed the myth:

If you do good work, the world will find you.

So I kept my head down.

I made things well.

I waited.

But the world didn't come knocking.

Not because I wasn't ready.

But because the world wasn't looking.

It, too, was buried in its own noise.

The world isn't missing me.

It's too busy missing itself.

I've met many like me.

People of deep craft and quiet integrity.

Designers who shape beauty but never claim it.

Builders who pour their souls into formwork, but vanish before the concrete sets.

Teachers who give everything but never raise their hand.

Unseen.

Not because they lack value.

But because they mistake invisibility for humility.

Zen teaches us that form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.

But even the most elegant line needs to be drawn.

Even the most perfect beam needs to be placed.

Design is intention made visible.

Building is presence made solid.

So why do we hide?

Maybe because being seen feels like risk.

Maybe because we learned long ago to wait to be chosen.

Maybe because mastery often grows in the shadows

and forgets how to speak in the light.

But a life, like a structure, must emerge from the ground.

It cannot remain a sketch forever.

These days, I show up.

Not loudly.

Not for attention.

But because the world deserves to witness the quiet work we've carried alone for too long.

It needs us to be seen.

Being seen isn't about ego.

It's about transmission.

About legacy.

About leaving marks that others can follow, not to admire, but to continue.

The practice of being seen is,

in itself, a discipline.

A letting go of invisibility, and a return to contribution.

A hidden temple serves no pilgrim.

Field Note:

You weren’t born to hide. Build something only you can, where others can find it.

The world won’t be changed by your silence. Use your tools. Be seen!