How often do you stop to notice and savour the world around you? Let’s start with the natural world, do you know what phase the moon is in right now or the name of the highest mountain or tallest tree you can see outside?
We live in an era when our attention in the subject of unprecedented competition. Did you know that all social media platforms, apps and mobile games are engineered to monopolise your time? They are developed to be addictive, all the better to make you keep coming back for more. It’s the digital equivalent of the supermarket putting the essential items like milk and bread at the back of the store or the labyrinth you must navigate to find the exit at Ikea.
Now if you’re completely satisfied and content with how your life is at the present moment then don’t change a thing, however, if you’re not, then I encourage you to notice and play around with where you place your attention.
It starts with catching yourself in the moment before you might normally reach for your mobile phone, or switch on the TV. Look up and look around you, you might need to look or walk outside and notice something beautiful around you. It could be someone’s smile, or something in nature or a beautiful building. By all means spend a few moments appreciating that beauty and notice the difference in how you feel by placing your attention on something beautiful.
The joy of discovering beauty in your immediate surroundings is you’ve now enriched your everyday experience. It was there all the while, yet you were missing out. Have you ever noticed when you buy a new car you suddenly see the make and model you’re driving everywhere? It’ because the mind is now predisposed to notice it. It works the same way if you train yourself to look for beauty, you’ll start to see it everywhere.
I’ll leave the final words to the celebrated poet Mary Oliver, who spent a lifetime noticing and appreciating the little things most of us are too busy to see: “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Wes Smith