As technology speeds up, we look at an increasing number of images every day, and often don’t really see them, or allow our minds to absorb them.
In the visual overload, we miss the sensory experiences: the texture of a painting in a museum, or the smell of a book in a book store, and lose part of the tactile experience.
For this week’s optimizing yourself exercise, I am going to attempt to see things by paying attention to them and contemplating them.
Children have the ability to see things differently – when they look at something, they explore it with their imagination, their curiosity, and their senses, to see it.
Here is a story about seeing from the creativity post:
WE SEE NO MORE THAN WE EXPECT TO SEE. Our stereotyped notions block clear vision and crowd out imagination. This happens without any alarms sounding, so we never realize it is occurring. Not long ago, a man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin. It was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station.
One man stopped for a few seconds and then hurried on to meet his schedule. A little later, a woman threw a dollar into the till and without stopping continued on her way. The first person who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. In the 45 minutes the musician played, only the children it seemed wanted to stop and listen.
When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100.00.
Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment. Because he was playing in a subway station, people assumed he was a street musician playing for handouts and paid no attention to his music. They saw and heard what they expected to see and hear from a street musician.
Thumbs up to the children who had the awareness they were listening to extraordinary music.
I will let you know how Going BIG big with “Seeing instead of Looking” goes next week
http://www.creativitypost.com/
photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/oneworldgallery/4344737491/”>daystar297</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>cc</a>