MONDAY BYTES – August 15, 2011
When is the last time you had a moment to really think your thoughts, clear you mind, or really take in another person’s full presence?
We’re all so busy, so pressed for time — even during vacations! — that it’s easy to forget the “human” in humanity or the “being” in human being.
I read this a week or so ago and wanted to share it with you. It’s from John Thomas Dodson, his excellent “Creative Destruction” blog, and the posting is A Moment of Attention is Enough.
Over the weekend my friend Michael and I drove out to Waltham to visit the Lyman Estate–an historic country home with greenhouses, c.1804–and I had such a moment. We looked at orchids and camellias, walked the periphery of the grounds, and talked to one of the gardeners. I don’t know exactly when whatever it was shifted or clicked inside me. It might have been when we were marveling at the variety and sheer inventiveness of the orchid varieties. They are mind boggling, each one a different kind of show stopper, voluptuous, ornate, and more than that, they’re really THERE — making you stop and pay attention, as though they are saying, the way a piece of music or a sculpture might: “Hey you—you’re alive — pay attention!”
All of this is to say the afternoon’s excursion left me feeling like a human being again. Thanks, Michael! The afternoon get away, and the orchids, returned me to my senses.
My question for you is:
What can you do this week to take a moment and re-connect with life? What would help you re-charge your appreciation of life and of others? Can you arrange to unplug and go offline long enough to feel the spark of inspiration?
As always, I’d love to read your comments, and hear about your own A-HA moments!
PS: The image above is that of the ghost orchid.
