March 3, 2024

“I just want to live simply and pay attention to what's happening each day.” Kent Haruf author of Our Souls At Night

Wise words and a piece of advice I have taken to heart over the last six months. I thought I was paying attention before, making sure I snapped at least one picture a day for Instagram. But I was busy holding the camera to my eye and framing the picture and assuring the angle was just so or there weren’t extraneous whatnots so I’m not sure I was experiencing what I was seeing. Was I forming ideas and thoughts around the image? Was I deconstructing it or just forming an image to create an image.

The living simply isn’t a stretch for me, I’m too busy being lazy and loading my brain with dopamine hits to conduct a complicated life filled with ephemeral task. But the simplistic living isn’t just an absence of doing; it’s an absence of paying more attention to micro hurts and micro aggressions unfolding around me. It’s an absence of pretending my frivilous desires are soul level needs. I think this alone comes more readily with age.