Sight and seeing

What are you really seeing as you take in the sights?

There’s an odd magic on offer when you walk down the same streets, paths, and byways on the regular.

As you walk by familiar sights, you’re meandering past buildings, trees, corners, and gardens you’ve surely seen before.

What are you seeing as you walk your familiar streets, paths, and byways?

But sometimes it’s as if you’ve never been in this spot before. You know this feeling, right?

Seeing. You've know you've been here before but you have a feeling you've never noticed it before either.

Maybe it’s the season or the time of day.

Bare branches create different vistas than leafy ones. And gardens change their appearance every day. Light moves and changes in intensity, changing the look of everything it touches and withdraws from.

Seeing. Bare branches create different vistas than leafy ones. Light moves and changes in intensity.

Or maybe it’s what you how you’re seeing.

Are you looking up? Are you gazing afar? (This is not only a real term, it’s a dance move.) Change your focus, watch what you notice. Your computer-screen fixed-focus eyeballs will thank you.

Are you seeing what’s around you? Notice. Sometimes you walk with observant eyes (I call them my “photographer’s eyes”).

Sometimes you’re way way WAY too busy to drink in any bit of beauty — too busy watching and listening to the ongoing melodrama going on in your head.

Seeing. Are you too busy to notice the bits of beauty all around you?

Are you present?

Take a walk. Watch yourself being the beautiful human being you are, thinking your 50+ thoughts per minutes.

Feel your feet. Look up. Bask in the sunlight (the sunlight that’s always present, even when it’s cloudy or pouring down rain).

Breathe. Smile. Notice the beauty around you.

And then keep noticing, as you get lost in your compelling thinking once again. And once again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Seeing. Feel your feet. Look up. Bask in the sunlight that's always there even when it's cloudy or pouring down rain.

Simplify Your Life.

You’re invited to join me for the upcoming series of Simplici-Tea, Simplify Your Life events. Find out the dates, times, and all other lovely info here.

Like visuals and short stories? I’m compiling a series of Simplify Your Life images and essays.

No joke, my friend. Apparently, the memoir that I began last year has morphed into something that weaves together much of the wisdom gleaned as I’ve meandered through my accidental life.

For months, I couldn’t figure out the form of my memoir, so I left it alone for a bit, and turned my attention to other things, like Simplify Your Life and my line of healing salves and serums.

Look what happened after I turned away from my memoir for a while — it slid itself right into Simplify Your Life, which now looks like it will have a bunch of components, including book and a card deck.

Follow Simplify Your Life developments as they unfold on Instagram and Facebook, and by subscribing to the Magnolias West love letter.