Every spring I write at least one post about spring. You’d think I’d be jaded by now — after all, I’ve lived through a good many years, and each year to date has included a spring.
And yet…
Every year, I glory in it. It seems miraculous every single time: one week, dead grey branches and barren ground; the next, a hundred shades of tender greenery adorn the branches and wildflowers spangle greening meadows. We tuck inert seeds into garden soil and — voila! — the tender shoots emerge a few days later. We open the windows to welcome in the scent of newly warmed earth and the susurration of breezes in the grass.
I’m grateful to be enchanted like this every spring. And I’m convinced that this ability to see the same old thing with new eyes is a gift we all have — and of which we take insufficient advantage.
There’s a reason for it, though. Being able to do a great many things primarily on automatic pilot makes it possible for us to navigate our complicated lives. For instance, think about the things you’ve done so far today: gotten out of bed; done your morning ablutions; gotten dressed; perhaps eaten breakfast — and cooked or purchased it first; possibly gotten kids or your spouse off to work or school; made your own way to work or started your day in other ways. I’d venture to say that most of these activities took very little of your attention…in fact, you were probably thinking about other things entirely, or having conversations, while you did them. This ability to do a variety of things without paying too much attention to them enables us to do and say and think as many things as we do during the course of a day, many of them simultaneously.
But the fact is, we can fully attend to any circumstance or event or person that comes before us; we have that capability, too. And when we do, our experience of that thing opens up, and it strikes us with great depth and clarity. We see it for all that it is, rather than seeing merely the two-dimensional sketch to which our inattention reduces it. We all experience this sometimes: when we’re newly in love; when something brand-new (to us) is happening; when we’re fully engaged in doing something about which we’re passionate.
We forget, though, that we can look at anything through this lens of full attention — and that when we do, we’ll regain much of the rich freshness of seeing it for the first time. Seeing spring anew each year reminds me of this capability, and it’s a joy to me — but it also reminds me that making use of this ability to attend fully can make my life better in every realm. For instance, full attention can allow us to see our colleagues more completely, so that we don’t limit them to thin caricatures of themselves. Looking more fully at new ideas makes it more likely that we’ll see the possibilities inherent in them, rather than labeling them as impractical or derivative. More fully attending to our own physicality can make us more conscious of how we carry ourselves, what we eat, how we sleep: we are more likely to to support our own well-being if we’re aware of how our actions are affecting our body at a given moment.
Someone once asked Pablo Casals, a world-renowned cellist who specialized in playing the works of Bach, if he didn’t get tired of playing the same pieces over and over. Casals replied, “I’ve never played the same piece of music twice.”
That’s possible for each of us.