I was talking to my sister over the phone one day. I was standing in my backyard. It was a beautiful Sunday morning. My sister lives in the heart of a town with very little touch of nature. During our talk, I suddenly heard her calling her daughter. In an excited voice, she was telling her that she was hearing the chirps of a lot of different birds in my background. She asked her daughter to listen on the phone. I also started listening. I never heard the voice of the birds in my backyard like that before.
As part of our evolution, one of our key instincts is to give bottom-up attention. This means we are looking for external stimuli and paying attention to them. Anything new gets our attention. Once we get familiar, they go off the radar. We stop looking at them. They become invisible.
I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I often forget about it. The noise of daily life completely submerges the silent beauty of the place.
As a society and as species, our evolution and development have been phenomenal. Yet we have paid a steep price for that. We miss the beauty all around us.
The sad truth is that it is our natural wiring.
I hung up the phone after I talked to her, and I started listening again. There were so many birds and it was so sweet – it was a joy standing there and just listening to them.
I started wondering what was the implication of this experience during a talk with my sister.
I have a close friend – who lives in my home country. He loves nature. He travels a lot. He would tell the stories of those places. All those places and the beauty of them would come alive in his voice and the stories he told.
How would my neighborhood be if he came to visit me?
I imagine him coming as a tourist and walking in the neighborhood. I started noticing something. I felt a change in my behavior. I started pausing in front of small bushes or some wildflowers. I started looking at the neighbor’s gardens. It was a wonderful experience. It is like someone describing in an exciting voice how beautiful my neighborhood was. We have a beautiful hill just next to our house. It was his presence in my mind that made me see it again in a long time. It felt like I was seeing my neighborhood with the eyes of a tourist.
I use this often. I like to think of him and when I am outdoors and try to experience it the way he would do it. It feels like looking at my world with the eye of a tourist.
Conclusion
It is truly amazing how easy it is to forget the mysterious reality – our wonderful world. Pull of our senses, our instincts can keep us so deeply engrossed in the triviality of daily life. We completely miss the beauty around us. Yet, I think it is important to be able to enjoy the world around us. Walking in our town as a tourist is a simple way our world can become beautiful.
