studio non troppo : mindful design : facilitation

Photo: Tambako the Jaguar

Looking across a fence, we perceive ourselves differently than we would without the fence there. “The grass is greener” has always been a story about us, not about them, right?

Enjoying a slow stream…

What’s that feeling called when you’re on vacation, but the people around you aren’t? Or when you take a moment to smell the flowers while simultaneously being aware of others not smelling them?

Wondering about the fast stream…

And how are these things related to the pressure we sometimes feel to be caught up, not left behind, fluent in the newest, latest, fastest happenings?

I don’t know if some people manage to stay in one of these streams, the slower or the faster, long-term, essentially continuously, in a sustainable way.

I know I don’t. I switch from one to the other, sometimes gracefully, feeling good (or relieved, or excited) about the switch. Frequently, though, I feel I’m just reacting to outside or self-imposed pressures.

I think the various feelings we can experience when we’re in one stream and aware of the other are all related to the “grass is greener on the other side” phenomenon. Much of the time, as the saying most commonly suggests, we just think it would be better to have that which we don’t have.

But sometimes, for a little while, we’re able to feel ourselves being out of “this” world and inhabiting the “other (greener)  side.” What I don’t know is whether that’s an error of perception, an error of perception that cancels out a failure to be satisfied (two wrongs making a right), or a gift.