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"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
#saveferris
How often do we notice the unusual before it passes us by?
Pass by: this phrase implies that we lose something in the passing (How else can we interpret a colloquialism linked so closely to another about death?). What remains after a week of work, rest, and relationships? Should anything else remain?
Unusual: As a kid, I practiced spying lizards on fences and knowing when someone pulled into the driveway. At restaraunts, I made it a game to know another table's conversation and mood. I always watched eyes movement and body language as adults exchanged pleasantries or talked business.
I grew into this "surveillance of being" in part, due to an innate curiosity with which we all are born. (We should infectiously rekindle this curiosity for those who have grown too jaded to explore parts of the natural and philosophical kingdom we intermingle with every day).
A larger part of this vigilance was due to a wrestling with adulthood I began to feel even before ten. Somehow I felt the dying of curiosity and emergence of responsibility before it ever had it's grip on me. I knew something of the world having weight before I realized the reality that we are the bowl in which that weight is poured. This is what led to hyper-awareness.
My scattered attention, then, was not a clinically diagnosable brain pattern, but an almost existential grasping for signs of when to be ready for that weight.
What did you notice today?
A deep mindfulness of the world leads to insights that are often overlooked by others. We all are aware, to a certain extent. Some take in too much, like my younger (and sometimes present) self, and some take in too little, opting for ignorance we see portrayed in dystopias like The Giver and Fahrenheit 451 that hit all too close to home.
Chances are, you noticed something today and that alone is interesting. My solution (and prescription) is writing.
“Writing is the supreme way of blotting out your ignorance on a subject… It’s a confessional; it will reveal everything about you while you imagine you are revealing someone else.”
Writing publicly is a way to say to yourself and the world, "I noticed something today... that's it." It hones your ideas, encourages others to think, and activates the creative side of our mind and being
Pay attention some- I will be...