Be
Alive
“…remember
to be alive to everything, not just to what you’re feeling, but also to your
pets, to flowers, to what you are reading.”
May
Sarton
This is
an admonition that May Sarton gave to people who write. It’s basically a call
to pay attention to your surroundings, yourself, and the expressions and turns
of phrase you encounter in other writers’ work. I happen to think it applies to
everybody who wants to live fully. Pay attention, be present in your body,
notice details, use all your senses, listen to your thoughts. I don’t know
about you, but I can go through entire days without remembering a single minute
of it. Perhaps we need to do that sometimes—the psychic equivalent of chilling
out—but it seems a pity to lose a precious day.
Writers
especially need these skills of observation to paint pictures with words—so the
reader sees them clearly enough to feel present in the scene. A great exercise
in writing is (1) see it, (2) experience it, (3) describe it. Even if what you
see is only an ordinary leaf on a sidewalk, what color is it, how are the shadows
or sunlight affecting that color, what is the pattern or shape, how does it
look against the sidewalk, how does it feel when you pick it up, smooth,
brittle, leathery, what are your thoughts about the leaf? And when you write,
capture all that in as few words as possible! I remember an elderly editor
telling me, “adjectives are not your friends!”
Simply
learning to pay attention is a skill that will serve you in every area of life.
Most of us walk about oblivious to our surroundings. I know people who cannot identify an oak tree from a maple, not because they are ignorant, but because they aren’t
tuned in, aren’t curious enough to inform themselves. Especially in this age of
cell phone obsession, we google an oak tree instead of looking closely at the
one growing in our front yard. In other words, we experience life second hand.
The photograph at the top is what I am seeing outside my window as the sun rises. The clouds
started out as skinny streaks of deep fuchsia, which gradually faded and diffused
into flows of pale pink, with blue sky in between. Look at your sky, give it your
full attention for one minute, and then describe it in words. Now, you have a
relationship with clouds, with color, and with earth’s atmosphere that didn’t
exist before. You know it in detail—at least this one minute of it. If you did
this with everything around you—the people, your pets, your abode, your
neighborhood—how much more intimate would you be with your own life?
Today
is to be appreciated. It will not come again. There is no replay button to your
life. You must gather the details in the moment. Think of them as your life
bouquet; writing them down is like putting your loveliest flowers in a tall glass
of water. Savor them.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment