This morning was a beautiful one. The sky was clear, and the temperature was perfect to sit outside. My oldest daughter and I went to our local bagel place to enjoy breakfast. As we sat people watching, I got to thinking about how important it is for us to take the time to notice the world around us.
Often, because we are so busy, we rarely have a chance to stop and actually see what is happening in the world. Things happen so quickly, and our schedules are so filled, that we don’t often get the chance to enjoy the sights.
This means that we often miss out on the nuances of things. And, those small things are often the exact things we want to pay attention to in order to tip the scales and make change. In fact, we are often so busy, that we don’t even realize we haven’t stopped to “just be” until a tremendous amount of time has passed or we’ve been “forced” into a “sight-seeing” situation.
Clearly, we all need to do a better job of seeing the world around us, and in order to do that we have to insulate and protect those who we serve so they can focus on what is important to them, and then find the time to relax in whatever way seems most fit.
This also means we have to model enjoying the sights. Being somewhere and just enjoying the place and all that it brings needs to be enough sometimes. We can’t always be working through every situation. This is an area I need to continue working on, particularly because I love being involved in so many different things.
But as I sat there in the plastic chair at the bagel place, that is exactly what I stopped myself from doing. I wasn’t involved in anything other than simply being present.