Remember Slugbug? The game where you punched your sibling or friend in the arm every time you saw a VW Beetle? I couldn't help myself -- I taught it to my kids. Soon thereafter, their cousins introduced them to a new variation: Pinch, Poke, PT Cruiser, which is pretty self-explanatory and quite a bit more annoying than slugbug, if you ask me. Before the children were into these games, I saw VW Beetles and PT Cruisers only occasionally when I was out and about. If asked, I might have estimated seeing them 2 or 3 times per week. Now I see them *everywhere*! Every time we go out I see at least one of each, and usually far more than that. I would guess now that I see an average of 5 of each model every day. Has there been a surge in sales of cute little cars? Of course not. The only difference is that I am taking notice.
Sometimes our blindness to things we aren't paying attention to can be complete. A couple of years ago, in the fall of the year, one of the children got a book about trees. In it was a picture of a smoke tree. I had never seen a smoke tree (or so I thought) and assumed that they must grow in some other climate. The following spring, when our next-door neighbor's smoke tree bloomed, I recognized it from the book. Suddenly I saw smoke trees every day. On a street that I traveled about once a week, I noticed that almost every house had a smoke tree in the yard! It's hard to believe these beautiful trees went completely unnoticed by me for 34 years, but it's true.
It makes me wonder what else is all around me that I don't take notice of? And what do I notice too often, so that my perspective is distorted? For example, is our culture really as "uncivil" as it appears to many people? Are there perhaps just as many "nice folks" as there have always been? Are most Americans really "sheeple"? (sigh -- I must admit that I'm pretty convinced the answer to that last one is "yes", but perhaps that makes it a good test case, lol!)
What would happen if we picked one assumption we have and spent the next week or month trying to change what we take notice of? I think I'm going to try it.
P.S. If you want a definition of sheeple, there's a good one on this site. The rest of the site does not necessarily reflect my own beliefs, however.
Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Woman
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I received my membership card from the Philadelphia Museum of Art today.
The front of it has an excerpt from a painting by Wassily Kandinsky, Circles
in ...
2 years ago
3 comments:
Steph- glad to see you are passing on a slugbug tradition to your children. Rick and I still play slugbug every time we get into the car together. It's still fun for some reason. You know what's funny—I have just noticed those smoke trees this year as well. But I didn't know that's what they were. I just noticed one and thought it looked cool, then noticed more and more this summer...including your neighbor's. I agree with your comments about taking notice of things. Except the part about "sheeple"—that term seems a little harsh. I read the definition and was a little turned off by it because it seemed sort of arrogant, as if whoever wrote that definition had their own agenda in mind. Anyway...there are a lot of Beetles out there, aren't there?
First I must apologize for the pinching and the poking and assure you that I'm just as tired of it as you! And I have also noticed that everywhere we go now, I'm being pinched and poked much more than what I thought I could be based on what I *thought* the sales of those cars were. But the idea of taking more notice of things and seeing them, perhaps, in a different light is a great idea! (Especially as I go grudgingly back to work.) Maybe with this viewpoint I can take my situation which I tend to be negative about and notice the good things and appreciate them more. Thanks for the perspective. And again, I apologize for the whole PT Cruiser thing! LOL
Love, Mandy
Hi guys,
Sorry if I offended with the sheeple comment, Laura. While the person whose site I linked to *certainly* has his own agenda, I've heard the term used by people of widely divergent political stripes. It *is* a bit harsh and not very Christian, I suppose. It's just that I get so discouraged with society sometimes, it's easy to fall into sarcasm. :o( One of my personal spiritual challenges is to work on letting people be where they are without judgement. "When you know better, you do better" is a favorite quote of mine. (I heard Maya Angelou say it, but she may have been quoting someone else.) I've come along way in both knowing and doing in my life. We are all on that journey in one way or another. Thanks for reminding me of that.
Mandy, don't feel the need to apologize, lol! I really don't mind. :o) Good luck with work this year!
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