What If We Look Up?
Do you ever wonder how the seasons seem to abruptly change from summer to fall? It feels like the trees are green and then one morning we wake up and they’re painted tones of yellow, orange and red. But maybe the changing seasons are more subtle than we think. If we looked close enough, we’d notice the transformation from summer to autumn, reflected in the intermixed colors, the light fall of leaves and the crisp morning breeze before a warm day.
For me, it's about this time in the semester when life becomes a game of motions, occupied by the energy to get through the moment and move on to completing the next task. It starts with fall break this week, then Thanksgiving break in a month and Christmas break right around the corner. Or it could be an exam on Tuesday, a paper due on Friday and a presentation up next. Weekends sandwich busy weeks offering moments of relief. As seniors, we’re preoccupied with that lingering question of post-graduate plans and the unknown details of the life set ahead of us.
A couple of weeks ago I went to sleep anticipating the week ahead. I knew I would embrace my to-do list mindlessly, being comfortable with a busy routine and energized by productivity. I was craving a small moment of slowness before the start of my day. There's a trail a few miles from here that I came across last semester but it is not marked on a map. I drove around for 30 minutes in a 2-mile radius trying to find this trail and could not for the life of me. I gave up and came back to my house, more stressed than before. I didn’t have much time but took a walk at the end of my street where there’s a somewhat hidden pond.
At that moment I noticed things in nature that I would typically have just walked past. I noticed the way the bugs on the pond created light orbits in the water, the interplay of trees and bushes creating an asymmetrical balance, the ants passing twigs between each other and a family of deer passing through the landscape. I realized that whatever felt like wasted time initially, was divine timing. Suppressing the need to be governed by productivity and checklists allowed for divine timing to reveal the beauty I needed to see that morning.
My favorite movie, About Time, tells a story of the beauty of embracing ordinary life as extraordinary. The protagonist, Tim, realizes how every moment of his life offers something worthy of gratitude. Initially, he’s hyper-fixated on creating a life where he can control the outcomes of both the big and small. He's so devoted to an ideal future that he neglects noticing what’s around him. When he commits to this disposition of noticing, the seemingly mundane aspects of his day compile to emulate the wonderful life. He notices the smile of the barista giving him his daily coffee, the beauty of the court where he practices law and the cold mannerisms of his boss as an opportunity for laughter between him and his colleague. Tim’s message offers a simple recipe for the relief that we all crave amidst the busyness of college life.
What if we looked up? For one day, try to walk to class without any distractions. Just simply walk without listening to a podcast, music or looking at your phone. Take note of what you see, hear and feel. Try it the next day and see if you feel less stressed and more connected to the present moment. You might find that when we allow ourselves to be mindful of what’s around us, life looks a lot more wonderful and the stressful week we were anticipating doesn’t seem so overwhelming after all.