Saturday, June 29, 2013

Benched and Awake


You know those days that seem brighter than all the rest?

There are days when I take a walk, and everything has a certain sheen. It’s as if the world is jumping from it’s casing, pricking me on the skin, and making me aware of everything.  My senses are heightened, and my mind sharper as life begs me to drink it all in. I already notice everything, but on days like these my attention to detail has intensified. I am awake.

On days like these, I might finish my walk, and go into town on an errand. As I brush passed strangers, they are no longer a haze, but a chasm of individual stories and happenings. Each person has a face, and each person has a story. As I fill my basket at the grocery store with odds and ends, necessities and indulgences, I might notice a mother and her toddler. I’ll begin to study her face, as well as her little daughter’s. There’s a vacant routine being followed, evidenced by small wrinkles barely visible, furrowing the mother’s brow. I might linger on her story as I proceed to the checkout line. There I’ll switch my focus to the cashier, a perhaps middle-aged woman with no ring on her left-hand ring finger. As I leave, I might compliment her necklace and flash her a smile infused with all the sincerity a stranger’s smile could convey.

I proceed this way for the remainder of the day. The air is still tangible, the trees alive, everything with a purpose. On days like these, I observe. Something has pulled me from the opaque glass that often blankets my world. Often I amble through, very much in my own head, with life intricacies buzzing, and sometimes shouting through my head. Shouting things that don’t matter. Shouting things that shouldn’t be taking up the majority of my thoughts, or any of my time at all. -Things that distract me and from what’s going on around me.  I find myself yearning for, and missing the world. My awareness is savored on these “awake” days, if I’m lucky enough for it to last an entire day.

-Because eventually days end, and I sleep. I wake with the nagging thoughts of the trivialities of daily life, plunging me back to that opaque world with rhythmic, methodical blows. But, as with most things, the unnatural “awake” days can become more frequent than infrequent with practice. I’m learning to quiet my unsettled thoughts and worries, and to set them aside in a useless room in my brain. I don’t appreciate when others nag me, so why do I allow MYSELF to nag me? I’ve found, that as I’ve sent my nagging thoughts to their own room in my brain, that I’ve made room to notice. I’ve tried to clear my head. I’m trying to notice. I’m trying to stay awake.