Within the last few days, I've been ruminating about this phenomenon, change. It is, in continuation to my last post, a fundamental of life itself. But somehow, just yesterday morning, while walking outside at dawn heading to work, it occurred to me that change itself is such an abstraction by it's vulnerability to perception. Because that's all it is really: a metaphysical cognitive effect created by our mind's ability to fragment time and circumstance by our perception of them.
When you break it down again, everything in life is pretty much a creation of our own perception. Life itself is this perception. So it could be said that life as we know it, is only existing by our awareness of it. Thus: "I think therefore I am."
Under that 'clichéd' umbrella, it all seems pretty obvious. So much in life already is simplified and taken as understood, but then somehow without actually considering them, we might be living an unappreciated life that is bereft of further enlightenment. "Everything seems simple until you think about it." ― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife.
I took those few steps out the door and that's when it occurred to me that the sun's up, and it's pretty much been daylight for quite some time. And yet, I had come to overlook this, not by any carelessness, but due to two reasons, the first: that I had in my many years already come to accept the state of the day as how it came; in a nutshell, I took it for granted simply because this was the pattern that occurred each year; and secondly: so slight the increment in changing sunrise had been day to day that it became unnoticeable to my eye.
Both reasons harken to the very aspect of perspective. What exactly demarcated this phenomenon, change? Was it that which happened day to day? Or year by year? Or minute by minute? Yes, but of course everything fell under the category for measuring change, but change itself was changing through that individual acting as observer. So, far be it for me to wake even earlier each day to observe the lightening of the day from dark dusk to the second by second gradual changing of the morning sky and say with satisfaction, Eureka, I have witnessed change in its full glory. Rather, I awaken each day at the same time, while everything externally does whatever it's meant to do, with or without me, and thus my instrument of observation has significantly increased its unit of measurement: my observation of change bears witness every 24 hours.
So what? Well, so much simply just gets lost in the tumult of life. And that's sort of ironic considering that all this is life. So much just goes by unobserved, and while that bears little significance to our daily duties and responsibilities which seem to take much higher priority in contrast to dilly-dallying about thinking idle philosophies, perhaps the weight of our burdens would be so much lighter if we did, because by our neglect of these observations we lose the ability to appreciate.
This morning I walked outside, all bundled up like I usually am this winter. But suddenly it occurred to me, this is such a beautiful day. Sure, it was grey, the sun was not out, but a sort of balmy breeze was blowing and it wasn't the frigid cold wind that had been gusting the day before. The thing is, it was still -5C, and like I'd said before in Homeostasis, this is still a relatively low temperature. But but but, it was NOT, not to my perspective in that moment; I took that moment to observe that the weather was beautiful in comparison to the day before, and for that one moment - a mere few seconds - my observation heightened my appreciation for the near future; in fact, it made my entire day (thus far) so much more appreciable. The tiny injection of appreciation simply by my act of observing something I could have just as easily not notice made my own mood so much more greater, making my interactions with my coworkers also greatly more amiable, injecting energy into my own work, and also putting a smile of satisfaction and contentment on my bosses, all coming back around to benefit me. So there you have it.
Today is a beautiful day, what can I say? (Oh yeah maybe it being Friday has some relevance also)
P.S. If you're looking for more to read, interestingly, I wrote about Change years ago (in 2009!) and you can find that post here.
