Noticing the world going by

I was walking across the Mary Baldwin College campus late one windy afternoon when I spotted a kite flying high above Cannon Hill. When I got closer, I saw a man I had never seen before holding its string. I stood for a while watching the soaring, multicolored kite, its fabric rattling in the stiff breeze. My curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to strike up a conversation with its flyer.

Yes, he said, it really was too windy to be flying a kite, but he was enjoying it anyway. This particular kite was about the 12th one he had owned. We talked about the old diamond-shaped kites with tails that kids used to fly and still do in the newspaper comic strips. He told me he had once owned a box kite, but that those things made no sense. In a few minutes we parted ways and I left him to his flying.

Watching a kite seemed such a pleasant way to pass the time that I was reluctant to leave. I paused to watch how people passing by would react to rainbow wings overhead. I was amazed. They never looked up. Either the kite held no fascination for them or they never even saw it. How could that be?

I considered stationing myself on the walkway and pointing it out to them. That would be a pretty good way to have it get around that I was odd at best and quite possibly losing my mind.

A few days later I read that psychologists’ studies show that if we are not expecting something to be there, we simply don’t see it. It can be an 800-pound gorilla, but if we don’t think it is there, it isn’t, at least not to us. Also, we often fail to see anything that is not almost directly in our line of vision. Could this explain the mystery of why people took no notice of the brilliant patch of fabric overhead? 

This information is disconcerting in so many ways. It has implications for safe driving. I might not see the bike or the child I don’t expect to be there. That is scary. But beyond safety problems, how many marvelous sights am I missing because I don’t notice them? I saw this kite, but have I missed others? I have decided I need to make a point of paying attention. It is easy to do when I am in an unfamiliar place. It is at home that I can go for days without really looking at what is right in front of me. Those two trees in my front yard, how big are their leaves right now? The one with pink blossoms I notice, but the other one escapes my attention.

People can escape my attention, too. How many times have I sat in a restaurant when someone at my table asked, “Which one is our server?” I had to admit I didn’t know. In school I was taught to pay attention to what I was reading so that I could answer questions about it later. If I had to pass a test at the end of each day on what I heard and saw, could I do it? I know there is more sensory data arriving than I can process, and I can’t pay attention to everything, but how much am I missing that would enrich my life or someone else’s? At least a kite in the sky above Cannon Hill did not go to waste.

Minutes ago I sneaked over to large windows near my office that provide a view from this hilltop northwest across the town toward the mountains. I really looked at the budding trees, the houses climbing up the hillsides, a church steeple, birds slowly circling. 

Wasting time? Loitering? I think not. I am taking in this earth as best I can as long as I can. Standing at a window can be a holy task.

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a chaplain at Mary Baldwin College.