How perception changes under lockdown
For various reasons, I currently find myself in a position of waiting. It feels like I have few things which are immediately expected of me, and so the pace of my life has slowed significantly. I'm no longer finding that there's not enough hours in the day to do everything that 'needs' to get done, and I'm no longer overwhelmed with rushing from task to task. I am lucky enough that I experience this slowing of pace as a good thing - I haven't yet felt boredom. I am also privileged enough that I'm not worrying about work, or afraid for my health or my safety.
Because of the lockdown we're living through, my world also seems a lot smaller than it was. Travelling to see friends, going to gigs or simply wandering around town can no longer feature in my life. The space I am currently inhabiting feels very small - just the building that I live in, and two places nearby that I go to for walks.
So I'm inhabiting a smaller physical space, at a slower pace. These are changes which I suspect a number of us are living through (if we're lucky enough to experience slowing down of our lives rather than speeding up!). For me personally this way of living feels unprecedented, and the combined changes to place and time have changed my perception of the world in a way that I find very beautiful.
There is a seemingly infinite joy in the simplest of things. There are things like the sound of the world outside when I open my bedroom window, the smell of my coffee, the play of light on the surface of the canal, that I would rarely have noticed before - but with a slower pace of life, I find that I have the time and headspace to appreciate them. Everything in the world - even things which I might have found unappealing - is full of a strange beauty.
This beauty is also found in time - in the precious nature of each moment, of each hour. The movement of time, the endless transition between one present moment and the next, feels in itself full of infinite glory and complexity.
There is a terrible sadness too in both of these beautiful things (time and space) - for they are both passing, and moving far away even as we notice them.
Sometimes I can feel how space and time, reality's two dance partners, are actually just one 'thing' - not anything you could name or find the edges of, but a 'thing' nonetheless. This dancing 'thing' is moving with a purpose, carrying us with it if we will let it. And our task in life is not to resist this thing, hidden at the heart of the world - because it is leading us to the only place we really want to go - it is leading us home.
Because of the lockdown we're living through, my world also seems a lot smaller than it was. Travelling to see friends, going to gigs or simply wandering around town can no longer feature in my life. The space I am currently inhabiting feels very small - just the building that I live in, and two places nearby that I go to for walks.
So I'm inhabiting a smaller physical space, at a slower pace. These are changes which I suspect a number of us are living through (if we're lucky enough to experience slowing down of our lives rather than speeding up!). For me personally this way of living feels unprecedented, and the combined changes to place and time have changed my perception of the world in a way that I find very beautiful.
There is a seemingly infinite joy in the simplest of things. There are things like the sound of the world outside when I open my bedroom window, the smell of my coffee, the play of light on the surface of the canal, that I would rarely have noticed before - but with a slower pace of life, I find that I have the time and headspace to appreciate them. Everything in the world - even things which I might have found unappealing - is full of a strange beauty.
This beauty is also found in time - in the precious nature of each moment, of each hour. The movement of time, the endless transition between one present moment and the next, feels in itself full of infinite glory and complexity.
There is a terrible sadness too in both of these beautiful things (time and space) - for they are both passing, and moving far away even as we notice them.
Sometimes I can feel how space and time, reality's two dance partners, are actually just one 'thing' - not anything you could name or find the edges of, but a 'thing' nonetheless. This dancing 'thing' is moving with a purpose, carrying us with it if we will let it. And our task in life is not to resist this thing, hidden at the heart of the world - because it is leading us to the only place we really want to go - it is leading us home.
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