Background and Foreground

 

Hoitsu Sakai

Today is going to be the 10th day I've biked to work this year.  One of the benefits involves a slightly jarring switch of my attention.  Maybe not jarring, maybe "startling."   If I'm taking the car, I'll trudge from house to car; immediately tend to driving and probably listening to radio, adjusting the ventilation, check to see the garage door is going down, and beginning my usually distracted commute.  If there is something happening outside the car windows, I'm noticing it probably just to avoid it.

On the bike, every morning, I'll be noticing things immediately -- the temperature, the remaining sounds (crickets? frogs?).  As I turn out of the driveway begin my slower-than-driving trip, I'll scan the sky for the remnants of the moon, I'll notice sprays of birds winging from trees, I'll hear odd bird vocalizations.  In general I'm in noticing mode for awhile.  I'm more likely to notice other things - hawks overhead, slants of light, early-falling leaves.

Soon enough, I'll lose this mode and be more deeply in my head -- planning the day, rehearsing the day, navigating traffic.  But for the short period of time, the "background" of nature becomes "foreground."

I'm visualizing a diagram of a circle, representing a head.  Start putting dots inside, representing your awareness -- mental notes about lunch, about that conversation from last night, wondering if your child will wake up. with more or less of a cough -- these things would go inside the circle.  (and maybe be represented in a specific color...). Then there would be other dots representing what you perceive when you're more mindful of your environment... these dots would be outside the circle -- tree frogs, wind in trees, distant lull of cars on highway.  

I'm also visualizing a percentage... what percentage of the time do you go around with the dots inside your skull?  Today, I was 99.99% inside my skull.