You Aren’t Paying Attention
Daily Meditation 455–5/26/2023
Hit the ✉️Email Subscribe✉️ button to get these DAILY in your inbox!
Follow for daily philosophical meditations.
For many of us, we rise a bit after the sun, peer out into our yard and everything appears so quiet.
The sunbeams playing through the limbs of the trees, casting bouncing shadows in the street.
The morning dew across the grass, a telltale trail here or there where the skunks or deer have ventured in the twilight, hunting for scraps.
An occasional car rumbling by, breaking the otherwise silent morning.
The world is a quiet, staid place.
…or is it?
As you walk through the grass of your yard, next, sit down and look out over the miniature and wild flowers popping up through the verdance.
One…no, two…Wait, there’s 5 bees ambling clumsily through the warm air from one flower to the next, their soft buzzing a practically indistinguishable sound.
Dozens of ants creep along the sidewalk and through the underbelly of the ground just beneath your bottom, harmlessly meandering over your shoes and around you.
The birds are busily flitting all around, “singing” “for you” their territorial warcries and “Hey baby, come get a load ‘o’ this colorful plumage!” all over the neighborhood in their microcosm bird Game of Thrones.
The world is not a quiet, staid place.
You simply aren’t paying attention!
This is not a lecture, not a scolding — but an invitation. One which will help open your eyes, ears, and senses to the sheer shock of life in the world around you.
Nature (including humans) holds so many blessings and bounties for us to behold. What is the story of the raging warchief American Goldfinch in his Thumbelina-sized armor of vibrant feathers? What is the story of the bumbling bees as they bounce through the morning flowers, greeting one another “Mornin’ Fred,” and “G’day Tom,” in their bee accents?
You don’t need to watch for every ant on the walk and consider him, but you can take even 10 seconds each day as you are outside to pay attention to the sheer quantity of beautiful life abundant.
Hit the ✉️Email Subscribe✉️ button to get these DAILY in your inbox!
Follow for daily philosophical meditations.
These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”
