Noticing Things

I was listening to On Being yesterday which was the replay of Krista Tippet's 2014 interview of Ellen Langer (here). Langer is a psychology professor at Harvard University. The focus of her studies has been the opposite of most psychological studies - she studies, as I recall, what make wellness rather than illness. Much of it through studying mindfulness. She was studying this long before Jon Kabbat-Zinn created Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

Langer's approach to mindfulness is through noticing things as the practice of noticing makes us become present to ourselves, our surroundings and our day. She suggests that, for those of you who have a partner, that you notice 5 new things each day about your partner. I think that you could engage in this practice by just noticing 5 things around you, or about the people you interact with - whether they are new things or not.            

I once wrote a poem about moving from here to there and not really noticing in the true sense of noticing how I move around. Yes, I notice things just enough to navigate without accident, but where is my attention. This is that poem:                                                                     

The Mysteries of Driving

I remember that I
learned to drive,
but I don’t quite remember what
it felt like that first, second
or third time.
So it is a mystery to me
how I learned to
successfully maneuver from here to there.

In fact, I still find it to be
a mystery how I get from
here to there.
I get in the car, and then,
somehow, without hurting myself,
my car or anyone else,
I’m there

despite all the distractions
and things to concentrate on,
the lights, the signs,
the trees wafting in the wind,
the pool umbrellas, ambulances,
and anything else I pass.

©2017 Kathryn L. Samuelson

The photograph is from my book, Opening the Heart: Meditations on How to Be.