Can you spare 5 minutes?
Just five minutes before you rush off to school or wherever you are
planning to rush off to. Actually, I
need 10 minutes of your time. On two
consecutive days. Possible? Ok.
Just step out of your house.
You can either survey whatever is before you or you could focus on
something small. Maybe a patch of
grass. Perhaps a bunch of flowers. Or even a single flower or leaf. Do it slowly.
Five minutes is a long time when you do something that
usually takes you less than a second.
Just think about it. If someone
asked you to describe what you see when you step out your door, you will
probably mention the large objects.
‘There’s a black gate, a wall, a mango tree, a house whose roof can be
seen above the wall, the tops of some coconut trees and some wires,’ or
something along those lines. You won’t
mention the details because, perhaps, you don’t spend much time looking at the
details.
So if you take five minutes you might even discover that
you’ve missed a lot of things in your garden.
Like that brick under the jambu
tree now covered with moss or how the grass near the garden tap seems greener
or the kite that must have got entangled in the branch such a long time ago
that only the frame now remains or how there are dried leaves stuck in the
hard-to-get-at place between some flower pots.
Things like that.
After you do this for five minutes and go to school or
wherever you were planning to go, you might think about the small exercise and
look at people and things around you a little bit more carefully. You might discover that although your eyes
are open, you don’t see much or at least that there are things you miss. Don’t worry about it. It’s something we all do. We see big objects. We see things that stare at us or things that
seem to be screaming ‘NOTICE ME, NOTICE ME’ or ‘HERE I AM, CAN YOU SEE
ME?’ We all miss the details.
Anyway, don’t forget the second part of the exercise. The five minutes on the second day. You will see the big objects, the gate, the
wall, the tops of coconut trees, the roof of the house next door, the wires
etc. But you will not miss those small
things, details of the kind we mentioned above.
This is not an exercise to see if you remember what you saw
the previous day, though. It’s a little
bit harder. I am asking you to see if
anything has changed.
Now if someone asked you to describe what’s outside your
house today and someone else asked the same question tomorrow, the chances are
that the two descriptions would be identical.
It’s not the same when you catch the details.
The leaf has grown or looks like it has dried up a bit. A bud has bloomed here, a flower is wilting
there. The stone that has somehow rolled
on to the driveway seems to have been dislodged by a wheel or by the rain. A mango has ripened. Another has been attacked by a squirrel or a
bird. A third has fallen. Things like that.
The world around us is full of little things. A quick sweep
of the eye and it seems like nothing has changed. Take a little time and you will discover that
everything is changing. All the time.
It doesn’t have to be the view from the door of your house,
remember. You can look at anything. Just five minutes on consecutive days. Who knows, you might find it an utterly
fascinating exercise that you might want to do it every day!
Other articles in this series
It is cool to slosh around
You can compose your own music
Pebbles are amazing things
You can fly if you want to
The happiest days of our lives
So what do you want to do with the rain?
1 comments:
In a deeper sense; isn't it this change that is also known as "anithya" in Buddhism?
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