How Do You Notice?

Whether you are a creative type (I believe we ALL are creative types) or simply consider yourself an average Joe/Jill, I firmly believe that we can really ramp up our delight in life if we take time to notice. Notice, you say?Don’t we all? What does this mean? Not walking around with closed eyes? Nope, much more.

For years, I operated in hyper-drive mode, rushing from appointment to appointment, meeting to meeting, believing that the early bird gets the worm (and much more) by existing on limited sleep and limited attention to anything for extended periods. Not to mention that I almost felt a sense of pride in proclaiming, “I’m SO busy” and frantically scanning my calendar to see if I could fit in just one more event, appointment or project. Crazy, huh?

There was never time to be reflective, creative or even breathe deeply. Never enough time to do anything really well. At what point this frenzy revealed itself as utterly silly, I do not know. It may have been a gentle unfolding of the reality that there was another way to be, to live, to enjoy life deeply.

I now pin the blame on my camera. Yes, that little inanimate black and silver object spoke to me and showed me that if I slowed down and waited to observe (to notice) and get a particular shot that came with feeling I would be able to produce results that spoke to me with a passion even beyond the event or occasion of the taking of it.

With the slowing down of the process of shooting street photography, I also came to appreciate the art of noticing. Not rushing from space to space, from location to location which seemed to improve not only my photography, but my sense of well being. And the mega bonus of the surprise inside the CrackerJack was that the more I slowed, the more I noticed and the more I felt connected to the people around me. Getting out of my head and into the moment has moved me from a place of frenetic over achievement to an entire world of being in the moment. And those moments bring connection to my environment and a oneness with humanity I could not have believed possible.