I made tea. I like tea. Coffee's better tho. I made it after failing at writing an article. I tried multiple times but in each instance I had to delete it. I had too many ideas in my head and too little ways to put them all on paper at the same time. My article was a mess.
I got up from my table and I started walking towards the kitchen. Then I slowed down. It's something I do from time to time when I feel like I hurry. Like I spent too much time on autopilot.
We all do it. We're all on autopilot almost all the time. Some of you are on autopilot as you read this. We do it because the world is filled with information that you already know, that your brain already stored, somewhere, in a folder. You don't need to pay attention to everything around you. You can just do.
That's how I was writing my article. That's how I wanted to make my tea. On autopilot. And then I stopped. I stopped moving near the exit of my room and I started looking at the door. A big rectangular piece of wood. If you look at any rectangular shape in a wall you'll see a door. But you won't see more.
I stopped looking at the door and I started observing it. Every small curve, every small stain, every mark, the color variations, the handle, the keys inside it, the shape of the keys, every letter written on the keys forming the word "ISED" or "ISEO". I never noticed those.
I never did because we don't really notice things. We can't. We don't have the time. The world around us moves too fast and we have to keep up. We need to see information, to categorize it and then to store it in our brain as fast as possible in order to move to the next thing and make sure we don't fall behind, because if we do, we lose.
We live our life like it's a race. It's not about who lives or who's happier, but about doing stuff even if that means missing other things. When I finally got out of the room and headed towards the kitchen I started pouring water into a metal coup so I can boil it and make tea.
A trivial task. Metal coup, water, boil. But once you slow down you see more than that. You see every mark on the coup, you see every discoloration, every light reflexion, every shape, and how it feels. Then you start pouring water and you see more than a bunch of water, you see shapes, you see little spheres of water falling down in to the coup, filling it little by little, getting everything wet.
Then you put everything on the stove and wait. But what do we do while we wait? Nothing. We look at the boiling process and we see nothing, because we already saw it multiple times in the past. We stored that information and we don't need to observe it any more. It's there, we know it.
But if you pay attention you will see the shape of the fire, you will see the light around the coup, the hot air that comes from it, how water starts moving inside the coup, how small bubbles start coming to the surface and how little by little water gets warmer and warmer until it finally starts boiling.
Then you take that water and you put it into a coup. It takes its shape. You put sugar, or honey, and if you pay close attention you can see more than just that. You can see a ton of details we all miss all the time, because, after all, it's just sugar or honey - we have that information stored in our brain. There's nothing to analyze any more.
Then you add the tea bag. You wait for a few minutes, you get it out, and that's it - tea. You get back into your room and sit down in front of your computer willing to work more. But you didn't notice. You were on autopilot. You didn't notice the kitchen at its fullest, you didn't notice the floor because you know it's already there, you don't notice the ceiling, the light reflecting on the walls, on your clothes, on the water. You didn't notice the rooms you go through, the vibrant colors of everything in your house, the smell, the shapes of every object, the colors of every plant, a leaf, a window, a tree outside.
You don't notice anything. You just got your coup of tea and entered into the room without noticing the door, the walls, the carpet, the bed, the walls. Everything is already there. Everything is where it's supposed to be. There's no need to notice anything.
You sit down in front of a computer you don't really notice, because it's there, as it should be, and you start using it without noticing how everything looks, how every letter is shaped, the vibrant colors of every window and this text.
You probably didn't notice I said "the walls" two times a few sentences above. You didn't notice I changed the story from "I'm doing" to "you're doing". You probably didn't notice this story is not about me any more. It's about you. You're imagining. You're reading. You're moving too fast. You're on autopilot. Slow down.