How to Look at Everything

Have you ever realized that you’re unconcious of the majority of your life? Life is like reading a textbook: you miss details, you skip some passages, and you hope to at least get the general meanings when you’re finished. And then sometimes when you get to class someone notes a point from the reading that, though you read that page 20 times (drifting in and out of sleep) you still don’t recall. Do you see the parallel?

How do you walk? Could you describe it? How does your weight shift as you take each individual step? And how do these shifts change as you speed up or slow down? Is your posture pretty good? Is your stride wide?

Or what about the things you pass every day? How often is it that you notice something for the first time, though you see it every day? How frequently do you find yourself looking at the same person completely differently than you had before?

We live our lives with our five senses closed to just about everything around us. This is both a gift and a burden. If we had to pay attention to all the details of driving, walking, and writing then we wouldn’t accomplish anything. The reason why we’re such successful multitaskers is because we can ignore the details of the things we’ve already worked into memory. But it becomes very difficult to recognize and relearn the things to which we’ve grown accustomed.

I bring this up in a few contexts. The most obvious to me is noticing the world around us. I’ve been reading a book called How to Look at Everything, by David Finn… which is about retraining our eyes to the world around us. Looking at the world like a photographer is something everyone should try. Another context is dance. I’ve been dancing a year and a half now, and I no longer look at it as a mechanical activity. Instead it’s more about lead-follow and what I bring to the dance. It’s not so much that it’s difficult to notice what I do on the floor, but it’s difficult to change my muscle memory. The things I paid attention to as a beginner, though just as important, are no longer my focus.

There’s so much we do and see that we often don’t give enough attention. It’s like when we read a page over twenty times but only on the twenty-first attempt do we really focus on the meaning of the words. It’s not that we _need_ to focus on our activities or readings more… but we certainly could. And that’s all I have to say about that…

By the way, the picture on the right is from where I studied today… Lake Artemesia :). I need to get some rest now.