Life As You See It

“Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” – Henry Miller

“The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” – Julia Cameron

Paying attention is a gift, and writing about it sharpens the focus. I believe that blogging has done more to wake me up to the wonders of my immediate world than anything save the birth of my children. Having children developed my habit of capturing moments in pictures, but the years my kids were growing up were also years the writing quietly lay dormant, biding time. You don’t have much quiet time when the mad dash from diapers to packing school lunches to soccer and dance recitals to driving to away games to picking colleges is happening. And yet I wish I’d written it all down anyway.

Now, after the mad dash, the writing stirred awake from its slumber. I look around at all there is to see in this world. All there is to learn about the world. All there is to read and taste and see and most importantly, to do. Faraway places will have to wait once again, but there’s so much to see right outside.

Read a Mary Oliver poem and you see that you’ve been blind the entire time. Chastened yet challenged, you look more deeply at the world in front of you and deeper into the soul. And you write.