Careless Vision

A single dried leaf lays on the ground, backlit by the afternoon sun.

Glowing, reminding us of life that it used to hold, now fading like the sunlight itself.

A little moment of beauty that’s easy to miss in the daily rush.

A careless step and this bright little wonder would be ground underfoot.

It is often said that we should stop and smell the roses, to take the time to appreciate the beauty all around us. Before we can do that, however, we need to take the time to notice the beauty in the first place. Perhaps one reason it’s so easy for us to miss the smell of roses is that we are ignoring the flowers.

Unfortunately, being unaware of the world around us can make us careless.

So it is with our thought life, too. We can become careless with what we see and hear, and not pay attention to things that don’t agree with what we already think. Just as it would be easy to step on this leaf in a hurried walk, it’s easy to dismiss information that doesn’t fit our existing views. Rather than stopping to pay attention to new information, we tend to grind it underfoot and resist change.

This can then lead to carelessness in what we think, and can even stop the process of learning and growing.

Of course, it’s not practical to pay attention to all the information around us, but we can choose to test our thoughts, deliberately learn something new, find out what other people really think, and so on.

In other words, we can choose to deliberately take time to expand our thinking. Read an article that seems to disagree with us. Watch a Ted talk that describes a perspective different than our own. Talk to someone who has different opinions than we do and really listen, try to understand their perspective.

In other words, take the time to look around and don’t let new understanding get ground underfoot.