See what I mean?

[ornoth]

The human organism has been designed with particularly good eyesight. We’re especially attuned to detect and focus on any movement in our field of vision, which was a significant evolutionary advantage for an opportunistic species that might equally find itself as predator or as prey. If something moves, we want to know about it, what it is, where it is, where it’s going, and whether it’s something to eat, run away from, or have sex with.

The counter side of that is that we’re exceptionally good at ignoring things that don’t move, because they don’t warrant our attention. In our daily lives, we don’t notice the sky, the grass, or rocks. They’re background, not foreground. It’s really hard to spend any time looking deeply at something that doesn’t move or change. Have you ever tried? We’ve even honored the phenomenon with a derogatory cliche: “about as exciting as watching paint dry”.

Media companies have known this for decades, as you can see from the ever-increasing pace of cuts and context switches. The sudden movements and changes of color capture your attention because we’re hardwired to give top priority to the most rapid movements we see. I’m sure everyone’s had the experience of eating at a restaurant or pub with someone who is constantly distracted by something on the television, even when they’re not interested in the content of the program. Or the experience of being that person!

The price of this evolutionary advantage is a very real kind of shallowness. No matter what we are doing, we are continually distracted by whatever’s moving around us. Our attention jumps from subject to subject with the rapidity of a hyperactive hummingbird.

I noticed this walking to work this morning. It was a wonderful day, and I began looking at the nature around me: granite boulders, gently swaying trees, green lawns, and a cloud-spotted blue sky. But I kept finding my eyes drawn away: to a splashing fountain in the middle of a pond; to the cars passing by; to the maintenance guy painting a fire hydrant; to the men playing golf at the course next door.

And, of course, I began to wonder.

As I looked at all those things, I was just letting my eyes dart around, never resting on any one thing for very long. I wasn’t deeply experiencing the cars or the golfers or the fountain; my eyes were just registering them and moving on. I may have seen a lot, but I didn’t see anything very deeply or with any sense of richness or connection.

So I decided to “see different”. I concentrated fully on looking at the things in my field of vision that didn’t move: the trees, those boulders, the grass, and the road beside me.

The first thing I noticed was that it was really difficult not to let my eyes dart away. We’re so used to the quick cut and context shift that our attention is always fragmented. People no longer have the ability to actually concentrate on one thing for more than a moment.

The second thing I noticed was that once I did look at the things that didn’t move, my experience of the world around me gained tremendous depth and richness. There’s more visual depth in a bare stone than there is in any fast-paced car chase scene. And a single tree has more elegance and a more complex story to tell than any feature film.

By looking at the things that don’t move, I literally began to see the world anew, with wonder and awe, and a very deep sense of being present in the moment I was living. There’s beauty all around us, even in the most decayed urban wasteland, if only we made better, conscious decisions about how to use the amazing gift of our vision.

So my challenge to you is to try it. Stop letting your eyes mindlessly jerk your attention around. Take the time to actually look at the things that aren’t moving, that have always been background but never received your full attention and appreciation.

Take a good, long look at the things that aren’t moving. See the world for what it is, not for what it is doing.

Comments

[ornoth.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I was actually thinking along similar lines today.

I started out by asking myself how I might capture in a photograph the richness of the things that don’t move, without it just appearing flat and static.

As I was walking along, staring at a tree, a van zipped past, and I was struck not so much by the depth of the everlasting trees, but how briefly the van was there. Taken from a tree’s perspective, the van’s presence is but a fraction of a moment, which kind of puts our preoccupation with what moves in perspective. Why do we grant so much importance and attention to something that is only present for ten seconds before it’s gone, whereas the tree will stand there and be part of our sense of place for sixty years or more?

So my thoughts went from trying to somehow capture the solidity of the eternal to depicting how briefly moving things matter. Visually, the obvious technical answer is stop-action or time-lapse or long-exposure photography, something where the element of time is built into the very form. By showing the van as a temporary blip or a whooshing thing so blurred as to be almost invisible, that provides a great contrast to the solidity and visual detail you’d get with a long exposure of something that isn’t moving.

It’s something of a clichéd photographic technique, contrasting a moving object with an unmoving one, but I think it’s something I’d like to do more of. The results are difficult to predict and somewhat serendipitous, but I think I would enjoy working with it.

[iniren.livejournal.com]

Well, that has to do with our proccupation with change, I think - and the whole idea of speed (hence my deep disappointment at the "faster" book - it didn't really address any of this at all).

And then, moving away from the visual, branch out from the perspective of the tree, to that of the universe - all of us are just "vans", moving by. What makes us interesting? What makes any piece of your life something you focus on...? Ok, maybe that's a little far fetched of a comparison, but it all comes down to perception, certainly.

And yea, I think that's what the ultimate goal of the meditation's all about - getting into that perspective of connection, of seeing, of "slowness" as characterized by inner calm.