take time for Awareness
By MADELINE STERNBERG - Chapter A, Florida
One of the most important keys to successful living is awareness. The ones who are really alive, who find everything interesting, are the ones who have developed a high degree of awareness. Their homes are filled with beauty no matter how limited their incomes. They never have empty time on their hands because they are pursuing so many fascinating projects. They find life exciting no matter their age, social status or education. They have learned to see and to seek. They have felt the thrill of discovery, which can happen again and again because there is more to discover than could fill ten life times.
It is the insensitive ones who make mistakes in taste, serve tasteless food, who blunder socially. Because they have not developed this sense of awareness, they are living only a fraction of the life that is potentially within them.
Why are some so blessed and some not? Were they born that way, or is it something they have achieved for themselves-or lost for themselves.
I believe that everyone is born with a high degree of awareness, for children seem to have it in abundance. A child has natural wonder at the world around him. The freshness of this outlook can wipe clear our vision which has been dimmed by familiar acceptance. One of the special privileges of parenthood is the second chance it gives us to see with untarnished freshness the world around us.
Why is it that most adults have lost this birthright? Some more than others, depending on how much they have exercised it. And the problem is how to regain it.
There are three stages of awareness: Observation, understanding, and imagination, which is the creative stage.
Observation is the first step toward developing awareness. It gives us the ability to fill every idle moment with something interesting. It gives us something to think about no matter where we are. To notice is to be entertained without the help of another person. Observation is a full, all-out inspection, noticing how something looks in various light or from different angles, how it feels or what it weighs, how it looks at more than one time, how it changes when wet or dry, young or old, if it is a growing thing, how its character changes when brought indoors or taken outdoors. It means noticing how a thing is made or designed. So practicing this enables us to really see when we look.
Take the example of the woman who took up painting to fill the void after her children were grown and away from home. She suddenly became aware of the great range of colors, perspectives, and the balancing of masses and colors. She bubbles over with her new discoveries. Driving with a friend over a familiar road she exclaimed, “Look! Wouldn’t that make a beautiful painting. I never noticed that hill before with the old barn tucked in the curve of its arm.” Her life was greatly enriched by her new sensitivity of beauty. She discovered what the great French naturalist, Jean Henri Fabre, believed so fervently, “What matters in learning is not to be taught, but to wake up.”
Each of us looks at the same world as the poet or artist, but with his discerning eye he is more acutely aware of what he sees. This brings to mind a story I recall having heard as a child, which my father used as an illustration in a sermon. It was about the French artist, Millet. As he was sitting before his easel painting a picture of the landscape before him, a friend came along and watched over his shoulder. After a time the friend said, “It’s beautiful, but I don’t see the scene as you are painting it.” Millet replied simply, “Don’t you wish you could.” We see the same world not only of the poets and artists, but also of the inventors and discoverers, yet the heightened awareness with which they see has made them unique in history. Isaac Newton, watching the fall of an apple in a garden, saw the cosmic conception of universal gravitation. James Watt, musing over a steaming kettle is said to have invented the steam engine. Darwin’s awareness of a principle produced the theory of evolution-and so on.
The second stage, insight and understanding, is the interrelation of things-how one thing affects another. Once we have learned to see a thing fully, we are well along the road to this next step, for if we train ourselves to notice, we notice everything. We can’t help it. Now we begin to connect things. We notice and begin to understand the effect one thing has upon another-that a blue dress makes blue eyes look bluer. We see causes and effects.
This moves us into the creative stage of awareness. In noticing how a thing is better in one context than another we begin to develop taste, our own personal taste as opposed to imitation (which isn’t really taste). We might want to choose between putting tomatoes in a green or a red dish, for we know that they can be made to look more appetizing if we choose rightly. Or if we are buying a new rug we know we must not buy a bright color, which might show how faded the draperies are. Instead, choosing a so-called faded color for the floor will make old furnishings look rich instead of aged. So this is the reward that we can use in our daily living. We can now bring things together in such a way that they please the eye while they are serving us.
A fine example of finding creative talent through learning to look is the example of the husband and wife, both school teachers, who decided to do something about the rut they found themselves in. They were always tired; nothing ever excited or inspired them. They noticed that the lives of certain other people had more richness than their own. So they began cultivating the friendship of these people they admired. They noticed that these new friends were invariably very much interested in one thing or another-nature, cooking, good music, art or gardening. At that time they had no special interest. In learning to observe, they discovered that they both had a real talent for creativeness. They took up one hobby after another with such enthusiasm they never dreamed possible. In a few years they realized that lack of money was no obstacle to having a beautiful home, which they have built and filled with the beauty of their creativeness. They had awakened and learned to live.
So awareness can be three things in our daily living. Observation can fill our idle moments, understanding can help us assemble with beauty the objects we use daily, and imagination can guide us to make right choices, so that new things enhance the old.
Though I have emphasized these three stages to help us enjoy more fully the beauties of everyday living, awareness has a spiritual dimension as well. A mature man was once described as one who was “extraordinarily aware of other people, of surroundings, of moods and undercurrents.” To be aware of another’s feelings is a treasured attribute.
The occasional pain of awareness can be the path to growth and understanding. A missionary who had just arrived in Africa was overwhelmed by what she saw. She poured out her feelings to another missionary, “I can’t bear it here. I can’t stay. It hurts so.” The older missionary said to her, “You needn’t worry while it hurts. It’s when it stops hurting that you can begin to worry.”
It is true that things that shock or please us at first soon lose their poignancy.
I’m sure that many of you read Larry Thompson’s daily column in the Miami Herald and so perhaps read a recent article entitled “Don’t Sell Beauty Short.” I’d like to read a few excerpts from that article:
“We are so used to the beauties of our area that we never notice them. The other evening we visited some friends to see home movies. These were pictures taken by a Swiss family which has been living here for several months .... Watching their pictures I realized that I have never used my own camera on such views of the home town area. They are so commonplace to me that I have forgotten their beauty.
“I remember my first days in Miami when I left a snowstorm in New York to arrive in a land of warm sunshine and cool breezes. In those days I couldn’t get enough of looking at my surroundings. Each day each sight was a revelation and glory to behold.
“Now a palm tree is just a tree. The sun is just something to get mad at if it doesn’t shine and complain about if it gets too hot. A flower is something that should be there year around, and a hedge is something that needs trimming too often. The deep blue sea is not a breath-taking sight but something to fish in. The bay is something the causeway crosses so you can get from here to there.
“But after seeing those films, taken by the Swiss visitors, I decided I was going to open my eyes. I’m going to start seeing my hometown again.”
Only by exercising our imagination and increasing our reservoir of knowledge can we keep our vision fresh and retain our sensitivity and awareness.
If we develop this dimension in living, if we are fully aware of the world around us, the hours of each day will be enriched a hundred fold.
Originally published in The P.E.O. Record - July, 1959