So I went for a walk the other day, escaped my apartment and my ever-addictive computer for about 15 minutes as I walked over to drop off the rent check at the office. Not a really remarkable accomplishment or anything, but it got me thinking...
As I was walking back, I thought "what would happen if I just laid down on the ground for a while, listening to sounds with my eyes closed, breathing in the fresh air?" As I imagined myself, lying in the grass, it occurred to me to wonder whether or not anyone would stop as they passed to check if I was alright or even dead whilst I was lying there... People tend not to notice things or not get involved even if they do notice. I suspect I would have had to wait some amount of time before someone came by finally, after someone else called and reported that a strange woman was lying in the grass for no apparent reason. Probably considered some sort of liability for the apartment complex I live in or something.
Of course one of the children around might have come upon me first. In which case, children being brave and bold - unlike us adults, I imagine they would have simply asked what I was doing lying there. Children still notice their surroundings. Maybe it's because they still have the luxury of allowing themselves time to stop and smell and taste and experience the life happening around them. Maybe it's just that undying curiosity that we learn to suppress as we grow older.
I find it interesting that we don't even take notice of things when we do have the time. Stuck in a traffic jam, most people will read, talk on the phone, bang on the horn angrily or listen to the radio. I find myself consumed sometimes with just looking out the window to see what the sky happens to look like, or what a building or sign or tree holds to peak my interest. We have created all these structures, not just for functionality, but to look at. If you watch, you see a myriad of design and color in the different buildings and other man-made structures around. Mother Nature has also created a palette of vastly extravagant colors and applied them liberally to our skies, grasses, trees and so forth. I watch these things and take them in, marvelling in them. Even when it makes me unhappy to see how our man-made structures have encroached so heavily on the canvas of nature created for us, at least I looked. At least I took the time to see the array of birds sitting atop the electric wire or the awkward lean of the tree that was trying to survive next to the freeway. I try to take those moments, breathe them in, and relish them.
I just fear that so many people forget to take in the beauties of what we have, that they will never get to see them before they are gone. Painted over in lieu of a new, fresh white canvas for the next generation of sounds, sights, smells and tastes to be brushed onto, perhaps with less delicate strokes than the last.