When I was a geography undergraduate and was taking classes in hydrology, weather and climate, glaciology, geomorphology, geology etc, suddenly the landscape and the sky became ‘things to be interpreted’. There were geological ‘eras’ to identify, weather fronts to recognize, oxbow lakes to analyze, and glacial deposits to document and date.
It was all fascinating - there is a reason I am still in the environmental sciences. But, when you look up into a beautiful evening sky, and think, ‘is that type 1 cirrus or is that type 4 cirrus? and what does that mean for tonight’s forecast?”, instead of ‘wow - what a beautiful streaky orange sunset!’, then it’s all gone too far and you’ve lost the point.
One of my professors recognized the danger for us when he wrote an article for the department journal called ‘Time to Stand and Stare’. It was a poetically-written entreaty to sometimes forget the questions and just take time for the experience. Just because you know that this is a glacial landscape doesn’t necessarily make the wide valleys and treeless hills more or less beautiful. You have to take yourself out of that expertise for a moment to recognize the beauty. I still have that article on my shelf as a reminder.
The whole premise of Earth’s Next Chapter arose out of the idea that it’s hard to know what to save and what to create, when we don’t take the time to know what we love and value. Experiencing the magic and beauty and wonder of the world around us is critical.
The challenge we face when we get to know something well enough to interpret it, is that tend to approach it from a cognitive frame instead of an experiential frame. And as soon as you dive into a cognitive approach, it tends to block out the part of you that wants to just enjoy a thing.
For example, I imagine if you know a lot about music, it must sometimes be difficult to listen to a symphony without noting each modulation or key change or surprise chord combination. You’re not allowing yourself to be swallowed by the emotion or story of the music if you’re questioning whether quite that many reprisals of the musical theme is necessary in the first movement.
If you’re a great photographer, I bet it’s easy to get caught up in the mechanics of macro lenses and lighting instead of how amazing an ant’s eyeball is up close (hmm…do ants even have eyeballs? Not sure).
A few weeks ago, I went birding. I am not a fabulous birder, but I usually know most of what I see (I’m much worse at identifying the birds I can hear). On this particular trip though I saw several birds that I just could not identify even when I got a pretty good look at them. It was super frustrating, and for that few minutes while I was desperately searching my mind and my apps for possible species, and the trees for a better look, I wasn’t really having that much fun.
It wasn’t until I quite literally took a step back, removed my binocular from my eyes, and put away the bird ID app, that I remembered it was a glorious fall day, with plenty of birdsong all around me that sounded lovely no matter what small greenish warbler it might belong to. Duh.
Most of us become knowledgeable about something or other: hybrid azaleas, computer assisted design, Guatemalan coffee, labradors, postage stamps of the 1930s, bread baking, or crocheting miniature quilts, but just because we’re an expert, it doesn’t mean that the lens through which we view those things should always be cognitive. It’s important to remember why we wanted to learn more about those things in the first place. They were fun or beautiful or delicious or cute.
Knowing more about something can enhance its experience: I can see a beautiful sunset sky and know that it means rain is likely. I can enjoy a glorious fall day and know that the birds I’m seeing are insect-eaters and not seed-eaters. You can enjoy the rich taste and aroma of your Guatemalan coffee and know that it was grown in the Fraijanes region on the slopes of the Pacaya volcano.
But we can only enjoy these experiences if we deliberately choose to consider them experiences - things that we notice with our five senses - rather than only stuff we can know from our research.
It is critical for our own personal next chapters, our kids’ next chapters, as well as for community and our planet that we are able to balance experiencing life with developing knowledge, and hold them with equal weight. Wonder and awe are far more easily reached through an experience than through a new fact.
‘Inspiration’ literally means ‘breathing in’, and so today I’m hoping that you can take a step back from whatever your expert-self is engaged in today, and remind yourself how cool it is to be involved in it. Take a moment to breathe in and be re-inspired by the wholeness and magic of your craft or your activities, whether you’re weeding your garden, managing someone’s accounting, writing a climate assessment (me!), or designing a book jacket.
Remember the point. Ultimately, all the things we do are so that we can experience more life. Don’t forget to do some of that experiencing today.
You’ve inspired me to go outside and “listen” to my backyard… grateful thanks, Anne!