When you’re here
From here, oh,
you can hold yourself,
so you can laugh.
Free to explore
all manner of things.
When you’re here,
an i in the O-cean,
you’re no longer waiting
for something to happen or to change.
When you’re here
you have what you seek.
Your heart opens
to the gift you receive,
that you are.
You are drinking at the well
of being you
(Jean-Pierre Weill. Excerp from the book The Well og Being)
Om forfatteren
Jean-Pierre Weill is a French-American artist, animator and author whose work bridges visual art with philosophical inquiry. He spent years working in animation and illustration before turning his creative attention toward books that blend imagery with contemplative wisdom. His background in visual storytelling shaped his distinctive approach to writing, where words and pictures work together to communicate ideas that resist easy explanation.
Weill published The Well of Being: A Children’s Book for Adults in 2016. The book grew from his personal practice of meditation and his study of contemplative traditions from both East and West. He created the work as a visual and poetic meditation on presence, self-acceptance and the nature of awareness. Each page pairs spare, evocative illustrations with brief passages of text, allowing readers to absorb the ideas slowly rather than consume them quickly. The format reflects Weill’s belief that wisdom about being present cannot be rushed or intellectualized. It must be felt.
The meaning of the text
The text speaks directly to the experience of arriving fully in the present moment. Not because we’ve achieved something or fixed our problems, but because we’ve recognized that the “here” we’ve been searching for has always been available.
The image of being “an i in the O-cean” captures the relationship between individual identity and the larger whole. The lowercase “i” suggests a loosening of the ego’s grip, while the playful splitting of “ocean” draws attention to the “O” as a symbol of wholeness or completeness. We remain ourselves, but we also recognize our connection to something vast.
Most people live in a state of waiting. Waiting for circumstances to change, for the right relationship, for enough money, for the weekend. This waiting keeps us perpetually displaced from our actual lives. The text suggests that when we stop waiting and fully inhabit the present, we discover that what we sought was never somewhere else. The seeking itself was the only thing standing between us and the peace we wanted.
The final lines carry the central teaching. “You are drinking at the well of being you.” The gift we receive is not external. It is the simple fact of our own existence and awareness. The well is not a destination to reach but a source we already contain. To drink from it requires only that we recognize it exists.
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