Look Up!

Last week, we learned about James Williams' Stand Out of Our Light. We took his discussion about the way that our phones distract us from our reality and pull us into an unknowing world in which we are consumed. Over the past couple of weeks, we practiced that. We took the concepts we learned with Williams and applied them to some of Manoush Zomorodi's Broad and Brilliant and Rob Walker's Art of Noticing.

For the purpose of this blog, we are going to focus on the challenges in Rob Walker's book. Our professor provided a list of five short challenges for us to take on. Simple enough, we could choose to sit and listen to some things around us for a bit, sketch a room from memory, look out a window, sit by a window or in a room you may not normally sit in, or take a color walk.

Seems kinda dumb, huh? (I'm just saying what we all thought so if you see this, Vroomen, don't be mad).

actual representation of me people-watching at 11:30pm

I started my challenge late one night after work and chose to look out the living room window for a few minutes. At first, I had the urge to be bored and check my phone but after a while, it went away and I started noticing the number of people walking on the side of my dorm building at 11:30 at night (weirdos), I noticed a line of small trees behind the large one I had never noticed before, I noticed the number of cars in the parking, a broken light at a building across the street, and other little things.

Once I noticed the number of things I hadn't noticed before my mind began drifting further into thought:

"Where are these people going? Can they see me staring at them from the second floor? If they looked up here would I be scared? Would they? Why have I never seen anyone in the other windows when I'm walking around campus? I don't recognize them..."

A guy in my class actually did the same challenge and he went into a similar spiral. After looking out of the window for a few minutes, he somehow began thinking a lot about why we have fingers, how they move, how our brain can just tell our bodies to do something and we do.

(Now there are two types of people reading this right now: the first will completely understand because we have these thoughts on a regular basis; the other will think it is crazy because they haven't ever thought like this.)

Regardless of the reader you are, the point of the discussion we got out of class that day was about our attention. it was about how our minds have changed and stopped noticing things that aren't necessarily right in front of our faces anymore. The theory of the 3 men we have learned from and discussed recently is that our phones (and technology in general) have taken away our ability to be detailed oriented. We forget to notice the little things around us and enjoy the moments without a screen 2 inches from our bodies.

The challenges take 5 minutes of your time but they are worth it. They gave me a refreshing start to my days. They reminded me of why I go do the things I do and it's not for me to record for later, it is for me to live in the moment. Whether we are alone or with people, we need to remind ourselves to step outside of the hold technology has on us and come up for air every once in a while. 

Look up and enjoy what is around you.

Try one of these challenges and let me know...