Because I grew up here I was unable to appreciate the beauty in my surrounding. Despite looking I wasn’t seeing.
The appeal of places far away and different from mine made me want to leave. It seemed so plain here. The fields, the power masts and windmills poking out of the horizon.
Walking through landscapes we have known for a long time we stop to really look at them. Can we relearn to see?
Maybe it is time to stop looking for what you don’t have, but seeing what you have.
attention
I never looked for the extraordinary of the places right in front of me. I never knew there were flamingos living in Germany or I could see the milky way in the Eifel National Park. I never cared and I never asked.
notice
What if we looked at landscapes like we’ve never seen them before? As if we were on the other side of the world? Would we experience them differently?
When I walk on a road from my home to the bus stop every day, all I see after a while are the turns I take, the time I need to arrive and the cars I have to watch out for. The houses disappear from my consciousness, so do the trees and the benches.
When we know something we stop seeing it and we only notice what changed.
What we consider truth depends on how you look at it.
– Olafur Eliasson, Abstract: the Art of Design
in a new light
Those landscapes haven’t changed much since I was a child. However, to me they seem completely different now. Not long ago, I never would have gotten up at 5 am to view the sunrise over the fields and marvel at the colors of the sky.
