Out for a walk

I went on a walk yesterday. It was windy, sunny and crisp. All my favorite feelings in one moment.

Leaves twirling in the air as they fall to the ground.

I wanted to capture one leaf with my phone and failed to catch the perfect moment. I wanted it so that I could share the moment with others.

The leaves mocked me and after a few unsuccessful attempts to video the perfect moment of a falling leaf, I gave up.

In comes the American Beauty plastic bag (remember the famous floating plastic bag scene?)... At first I got excited. Here’s content! Then, I noticed that the bag was caught onto the sprinkler, which made it stay in place.

Just like the leaves, it mocked me, too. I wanted it to float in the air, like in the movie. But it wasn’t free to float. The irony of it’s constraint meant I could catch it on video.

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There’s a Buddhist notion of the miraculous within the mundane, and I think we certainly live in a culture that encourages us not to look for that.

We also live in a culture that encourages us to stage moments so that we can share them. A perfectly laid out dinner, a toast, an outfit, the perfect [__] routine... If we stage mundane things to make them special enough to share with an audience, how present are we, really? And are those things really mundane?

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The leaves were falling for me to witness alone on a walk. I couldn’t stage them and tell them when and how to fall. I could only surrender to the joy of watching them fall.

Is sharing a visual that I couldn’t capture more impactful? Do we dull our imagination when each thought is finished for us?

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I went on a walk yesterday. It was windy, sunny and crisp. All my favorite feelings in one moment. Leaves twirling in the air as they fall to the ground.

Do you see the leaves I saw yesterday on my walk?

Don’t they feel nice?