I know that title sounds daunting, maybe even fringing on the nihilistic, but I promise you, this blog will be quite the opposite. Over the years I’ve written many blogs with the title of “life through” or “life in” or something else along those lines, so that’s how the title came to me naturally in the midst of the brainstorm that was coming up with the topic for this blog. Life through an ever shrinking lens. Okay, so it’s not nihilism, it’s not deprecation, & I promise you it’s not claustrophobic as the imagery probably draws into your mind. So what is this blog about? This blog is about the shift in perspective that seems to be coming with age, or maybe it’s just a sign of the times.
A lot of the time when I sit down to write blogs at the end of my week they end up being about synchronicities, those moments in my day to day life that shared an over arching theme for the week, month, or however long the greater powers that be saw fit to hammer the lesson into my brain. This week was one such week. I had a friend send me a tweet on twitter (I shall never refer to it as X. it’s idiotic) that said the following:
“Me at 22: Wow, life really ends at 21.
Me at 25: Wow, life really ends at 24.
Me at 28: I’ve really been in the mood for an apple danish lately, I can’t wait to get to walk to the corner store & get myself an apple danish! :)”
To which he accompanied with the comment, “tea kinda” which then sparked a conversation which then led to the inception of this blog. & you know what? It is “tea, kinda!”
Again, I haven’t decided on whether to caulk all of this up to age, as both he & I are in our early thirties with a fully developed frontal lobe (in theory) or whether it’s an experience that those younger than us are also feeling of late, the data sample is far too small & limited for anything conclusive there. What I am noticing, however, specifically speaking for myself, my friend, & even Evan, whom I asked his thoughts on when the topic originally came up, is that we all are finding ourselves more & more in the mindset of enjoying the little things. Caring more about the “sweet treats” that make us smile, the company that we share a kindred soul with, & finding wonder at every turn.
I’m sure there is a term for all of this, I’m also certain that if I allowed myself to venture into the internet in search of it that this blog would end up being delayed another hour or two in its completion simply from the rabbit hole that I would no doubt stumble headlong into. What I do know if that the lens is shrinking. I no longer care so much what the broader collective thinks & feels about me, I no longer care what they want from me as an individual, & I no longer seek the approval of those who I know I would have to encase myself in some false presentation of who I am to be in the good graces of. I am, all in all, in search of simple, humble, minuscule happiness. I am looking for connection, not out of need for acceptance or desire to expand a social circle, but simply to share something human with another person on the same level. To laugh & collaborate, to create & feel & empathize with because I think we have lost a lot of that in the rat race of clout, fame, popularity, & ambition.
I live a lot of my days of late in more silence that I had allowed in before. I sit & ponder the thoughts that pass through my brain, I think of the daily cross sections of humanity & how beautiful a lot of what we encounter in our day to day lives actual is. I think about life & its cycles. I think about evolution, adaptation, passion, experience, & I marvel at how grandiose it all is. How precise, calculated, & yet utterly wild it all is. In a lot of ways, in shrinking the lens, in minimizing the focus away from things that really don’t matter, I am finding infinite streams of beauty & expression.
I know that last paragraph sounded pretty ‘woo woo.’ I hope that I didn’t lose you in it, but in all honesty that is what I feel, that is what is flowing through my mind. That is how I am living my life at the moment. & it’s simple & mundane at times but it is so refreshing to live in the quiet sometimes. To just be. To experience the marvel that it is to be human & the astonishing ways in which that manifests.
I’m going to leave you with one last anecdote before I sign off on this blog & let you all continue about your day. It’s a story that involves one of my favorite topics, Harvey. I’m going to keep this story light. I’m not going to delve into the pain of missing him or any of the grief there in, but I do want to tell you all a story that involves him in his later years.
Harvey on our daily walks was prone to literally stopping & smelling the roses. This was probably way less to do with the flowering fauna he frequented himself & more to do with the other dogs & animals who had done the same, marking as they went along. Either way the story rings true. Harvey, on our walks, would stop often to take deep long inspective sniffs at many of the plants along the path, most of whom flowered at one point or another. Often Evan & I would try to hurry him along to keep the walk moving, that was until we read something that mentioned that dogs stopping & investigating is ten times more stimulating for them & their brains than just the walk itself. Then we too slowed & allowed his reprieve from the walk.
When Harvey passed our vet sent us an ink print of his nose. Evan & I then went around to each of the spots that he would stop each day on our walks, collected & dried the flowers from the plants that he had spent so much time & waining energy interacting with. They now adorn his nose print in a wooden frame in our living room.
So what’s the lesson here? Why bring it up? How does it connect? Harvey saw the value in stopping the motion that often was difficult for him to stop & start & taking in these expression & signatures of life. It wasn’t til he was gone that I truly appreciated them for what they were, that I truly understood how important if is to cut it all out, stop, & experience something just for the beauty of what it is or the signature that it bares.
We live in such a grind culture. We live in a culture that idolizes, that rewards the image & not the individual. We project our most attractive aspects up onto social media or our blogs but seldom do we take the time to shut it all out & really experience what it is to be human. We don’t think about the years that pastry chef spent perfecting that danish that lives at the corner shop you love, down the street from where you build your life & the cross section that all of that is. We don’t allow ourselves to feel the embrace of our partner or our friends without the fear of judgement or the pretense that we feel is required because that is what media or life has taught us we must do. We don’t ask for the things we need simply because we don’t want to be a burden so we suffer in the discomfort. We don’t stop & ponder the rain or the birds or the plants & the cycles they exist in & perpetuate. We try to force our lives into an all encompassing, broad lens, but I think if you zoom in, shrink it down, you will find all of the magnanimous happenings that you have been searching for.
As always, much love to you all,
-C