Habits, Proximity, and Surprise

Maybe They Go Together Somehow

I have 3 posts unfinished posts started for today.  So, right now, I'm chiding myself with "Hey, how about a little focus here...?!?"

It's not really working, as I'm still not landing the plane of my mind.  Perhaps, sometimes it's better to just notice what is (rather than try to scold it into any particular shape)....

I have been thinking a lot about our habits — how they enable us, but also how they ensconce us.

I've also been thinking about proximity — how differently we see things when we are actually close to them.

And, I've been thinking about the role of surprise in the discoveries of my day-to-day life — how often  it actually is an unanticipated by-product (perhaps of things like our habits and proximity).

Today's mash-up may be a likelihood because of things like my recent viewing of the movie "A May Called Otto", a powerful sermon I recently heard on the healing wisdom of grief, the house-fire of a co-worker, more mass-shootings, the personal disruption of the last year, a desire for change, a future I can't force my way into (but can still walk towards), etc.  So many dynamics, both of kind and nature.  

So, I sit here in the middle of it all — sometimes naïve, sometimes bewildered, sometimes frustrated, sometimes enlivened, and sometimes scared...often more powerless than I prefer to be (feel).

When I write like this, I've noticed that it is often in the revisions where the better stuff lies or, at the very least, where the clarity is.  One thought or way of expressing something leads to another, which opens up another and which leads to an eventual return to the original one, but at that point with a quite a bit more nuance and flavor in tow.

Sometimes, this can go on all day (even if I can't actually get to the editing at the time).  Today, I'm experimenting with the model here.  I'll add and subtract, tweak, revise and supplement as my engagement allows.  Let's see if and where it lands after all....

So here's a subsequent thought — what if surprise is related to my proximity to what is around me?  And, what if my habits often tend toward denying me true proximity?  I may think I'm close to certain things mostly because of their familiarity, but really I'm just going through motions, not really paying much attention to them.

Habits form, often out of our sheer tendencies towards efficiency.  They give us capacity to actually think about other things (because we don't really have to think about that particular thing anymore).  But, not paying attention to what is around us leaves us in some pretty unengaged states of being.  Stack enough of those and we're really not truly engaged with very much — we're actually not really very close to things at all.

Proximity forces our hand.  We have to see it.  It is in our way.  It requires attention.  And, even if begrudgingly, we sometimes realize that something significant is happening right in front of us.  

And, we are surprised at the realization of the significance of that thing...especially when that is an actual person.

...not landed, but now in final descent.

Isn't surprise really an engagement of the imagination?  Isn't this what makes comedy funny?  Love so disorienting?  Pleasure so overwhelming?  Emotion so spontaneous?  Truth so compelling?

When we are re-imagined, we are often a little taken-aback — there's more to me than I thought, after all?

We we re-imagine things, we can feel exhilaration, satisfaction, joy.

Something unexpected, when laden with goodness, is so fulfilling.

Proximity can nudge (or thrust) us towards surprise.

Our habits can inhibit or position us to be available to the impacts of proximity.

...touching down.