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related: Consciousness and Attention
Enchantment is just the measure of the quality of our attention.
Thought
I am concerned by this at times, especially with regard to loving someone. I want to share my time with someone, who for the most part, can infinitely fall into things. I’ve been places with people and they see even something “simple” or “mundane” like a majestic tree, or certain paintings and say “oh, that’s a tree” and move on. There is no more, besides what is in front of them.
But for me, something like that would make me extremely excited. I cannot help it. I feel it in my core, like a rush even when thinking of this moment here.
It seems like it is wrapped up with infinite paths of thought, branches and memories. In being there with another person, I yearn for their contribution, to collaborate and tell me what they think. The tree has all of its facets, which can take us anywhere and to anything we want. I’m starved.
And what about exhausting these objects in front of us? Saying, “oh, I know all there is there.” I’ve never gotten to it. My attention can manipulate it.
Disenchantment was coined by German Sociologist Max Web Weber in the early 20th century, as a translation for Entzauberung meaning “de-magic-ification.”
According to some accounts, it also means that we inhabit a world bereft of any intrinsic meaning or purpose and which thus generates relations of alienation and exploitation.
Andrew Wyeth - “the mundane, observed, became the romantic”
Jennifer Roberts - “just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean it is instantly available to consciousness”
trapped-projects Simone Weil, active passivity- “We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them, but waiting for them ”
Thought
There are precious gifts that can be searched and found. But I think the root of this quote is that in most environments merit can be found anyway by staying a while, and listening.
If you are constantly chasing new heights, you might lose the sight in front of you. I think of a day out. I can chose to split my day, multiple places, and see more; I can hope for the chance of precious gifts. I can also stop at the first place and wait. Dive into the scene in front of me, and understand it a bit deeper. Begin to notice and apply myself to the scene, and not the possible scene.
The difference of gifts of depth vs gifts of breadth.
G. K. Chesterton Trapped Projects
There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.”