How I'm trying to see everything with fresh eyes again

Somewhere along the way, I became tired, bored, and maybe even a bit cynical- here's how I'm going to recover

What’s my favorite memory of being in the moment

It’s 2011 and I’m walking around Osaka for the first time.

Checking Google Maps or Tripadvisor isn’t the default. AirBnb isn’t a thing yet.

Besides, I don’t have data on my phone. So I just hop on the subway, pop out like a gopher and just start walking. I look left and right. I see the neon signs. I smell the fried octopus balls. I can hear people excitedly talking around me. I have some vague sense of where I am, but it doesn’t matter. I am 100% fully present.

Every new corner- every store is a new and exciting experience.

There's something about exploring, wandering, and (even) getting lost that frees me. As long as I’m not in real danger, my brain is finally allowed to relax and take in all the new stimuli around me. Everything is so fresh and new.

It's a feeling I love. 

Being open and seeing with fresh eyes. It happens easily when I travel, but I can experience it in other ways. When I’m learning a new skill or reading a nice book. I experience it when I’m exploring new ideas.

It's a feeling of being alive and present in the moment. And it's something I crave when I start to feel like my life is getting too routine.

Whenever I feel stuck, or like I’m just going through the motions, I try to find ways to get lost. I go for a drive. I will try to visit a new place. It gives my brain that jump start to feel awake and aware.

10 years later, I feel that way less and less.

Where has all my attention gone?

It would be so easy to rant against social media and the internet here.

At the risk of being the elder millennial waving from his porch at the world, it’s just so damn convenient to stay inside, watch some YouTube, work from home, and stay in this little pod I made for myself. Going outside takes way more work than (I feel like) it used to.

These are the questions that are burning in my mind now:

• How did it get so easy to zone out?

• Why did we let it get this way?

• Are there any ideas on ‘attention’ that I resonate with? (Be it neuroscience, philosophy, theology, psychology)

• What can I do to get my attention back?

I don’t want to rant, because that’s too cynical- and I’m becoming aware of that in me. I’m here to be curious- and to approach these questions from the point of curiosity.

Let’s see what I find