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| Paul Klee, Fish - 1921 |
From Rubin:
113 Patience. We often take shortcuts without knowing it. When listening, we tend to skip forward and generalize the speaker's overall message. We miss the subtleties of the point, if not the entire premise. In addition to the assumption that we are saving time, this shortcut also avoids the discomfort of challenging our prevailing stories. And our worldview continues to shrink.
The artist actively works to experience life slowly, and then to re-experience the same thing anew. To read slowly, and to read and read again. ... Re-reading even a well-understood paragraph or page can be revelatory. New meanings, deeper understandings, inspirations, and nuances arise and come into focus.
Reading, in addition to listening, eating, and most physical activities, can be experienced like driving: we can participate either on autopilot or with focused intention. So often we sleepwalk through our lives. Consider how different your experience of the world might be if you engaged in every activity with the attention you might give to landing a plane.
There are those who approach the opportunities of each day like crossing items off a to-do list instead of truly engaging and participating with all of themselves. Our continued quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply. The pressure to deliver doesn't grant us time to consider all possibilities. Yet it's through deliberate action and repetition that we gain deeper insight.
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