Early Morning in my Neighborhood The Xavierite
We are living in a time where we are one thing from the next. Moving too fast to get things done, just to survive. We are not allowing ourselves to breathe, to keep in touch with ourselves, the world, and connect with others.
This semester, I had decided to take an eight a.m. class, which, as a commuter, sounded terrifying. It wasn’t exactly my first choice, but it needed to be done.
Needing to catch the bus so early was a horrifying thought, but it led me to a realization about the life I was living. Every morning, I take the same route to the bus stop, walking fast because I am always running late.
This particular morning, it was a bit darker than usual, and this house had its outside light on, protruding a pretty vibrant orange. It caught my eye because I’m used to seeing night lights in contrast to the dark, never in the daytime.
Even though it is the smallest detail, I thought it looked very beautiful. I just questioned how I never noticed it before. I’ve had this same walk every morning for the past year, not once have I stopped at the sight of anything.
On the walk to the bus, I was thinking about how many things I’ve walked past on my way to school that are waiting to be appreciated by somebody. Things that have always been there, but we are too distracted to notice.
Distracted by our need to get somewhere, whether it’s work or school. We are always in a rush to get somewhere, we miss the world happening around us, and the opportunities to appreciate it.
I think it’s easy to get swept away in trying to survive. I’ve seen it happen to so many people. Being fixed to a schedule of school, work, eat, sleep,repeat. Different variations of the same cycle bleed into the next day.
It’s not our fault that we are accustomed to this life, and that’s how I was taught by my parents to make it in this world. You need to go to school to get a job, and you need to work for money.
It’s hard to balance these things and have time to stop or do something for yourself. There is always a timer ticking on you to do the next thing.
Being so fixated on it is taking away the peaceful part of living. We need moments to regenerate and give our brains a second to catch up. Or else we will find ourselves drowning in a life we created.
We aren’t letting ourselves learn about what we love, learn about who we love, and experience something outside of our everyday schedule. There isn’t a chance to keep in touch with who we are and the person we are growing into.
I don’t think anyone truly knows themselves or the potential of who they can be, mainly because we don’t allow ourselves time to explore that. If it’s not part of surviving, then it’s out of the picture.
Surviving becomes the priority over living. We often put ourselves as a second priority, and find more importance in what we put out into this world. However that doesn’t define us and shouldn’t be so sought after.
There are simple ways to keep ourselves grounded and definitely with no phone in sight. The simplest of activities like sitting on a park bench, going on a walk, laying down on the grass and stargazing.
These all give us time to think and reflect, with no noise to drown out our thoughts. It’s an opportunity to observe the life happening that we don’t notice; the birds, the trees, the smaller life.
My dad was always blaming any problem on our phones, famously saying “It’s them damn phones”. Which I would never take seriously, but recently have resonated with.
They are making everything too accessible, we have anything at our hands in seconds. It’s easier to get any piece of information, to talk to anyone we want, to not respond if we don’t want to, it’s giving us too much leeway.
This has embedded the habit of gaining knowledge and learning in a fast paced manner. Our phones contribute to this developing issue of never letting us sit with one thing. We aren’t as willing to go out and gain knowledge.
Our attention spans aren’t allowing us to spend time on one thing for an extended period of time. We can’t just have conversations with people, with the option of leaving them on “delivered” or “read”.
We lose the passion behind physically striking a conversation with somebody and talking for hours on end. We aren’t exactly jumping at the chance of making a deep connection.
These things take time, no one wants to take their time with things. So we instead have surface level conversations, because it’s quick and easy. We get a quick laugh and then we move on with our day.
These short term connections get us by fine, but we miss out on a long term connection. I believe there’s a common fear about “wasting time”. I think that’s why we are always doing a hundred things in a day, no moment goes by unused.
I think it’s worth taking a chance to do nothing at all in our freetime. Listening to the ambience, listening to the sound of life, finding beauty in things standing still. Giving a moment to let our thoughts catch up.
I know it’s worth putting our phones down and taking our time scouting a conversation longer than five minutes. Even if we get nothing out of it, that’s okay. Outcomes do not define the importance of an experience.
Slowing down our way of living is coming to terms with loving small pleasures and noticing tiny details. It’s letting go of asking “ What will I get out of this” because sometimes the answer is nothing. That’s just fine.