In the silence the soothing sights and sounds of the marsh, the waving grasses flecked with butterflies, the distant soughing of the sea, the trailing ribbons of birdsong and the calls of the geese and gulls, could come into focus. ‘It’s good to sit and watch this gentle world,’ L said. ‘We tire ourselves out so.’
— Rachel Cusk, Second Place: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 4, 2021)
DK Photo @ Daybreak. 4:52 to 5:34 am, May 3, 2021. 39° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Live & Learn 
“good to sit and watch this gentle world.” – yes
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And there is the punch line.
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To sit and watch this gentle world is the best part of the day, don’t you think?
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No doubt!
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Have you not learnt that in the past year? I think you have…
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I learn something every day
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That’s a beautiful thing! You stop living, when you stop learning.
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Think of a time when you first visited a new, distant place, one with which you were barely familiar. Upon arrival, you were alive to every novelty. The smell of the food in the street! The curious traffic signs! The sound of the call to prayer! Flushed from the comfort of your usual surrounds, forced to learn new rituals and ways to communicate, you gained sensory superpowers. You paid attention to everything because you didn’t even know what you needed to know to get by. After a few days, as you became more expert in the place, what seemed strange began to become familiar. You began noticing less. You became safer in your knowledge. Your behaviour became more automatic…
It scarcely matters what it is – tying nautical knots or throwing pottery. Learning something new and challenging, particularly with a group, has proven benefits for the “novelty-seeking machine” that is the brain. Because novelty itself seems to trigger learning, learning various new things at once might be even better. A study that had adults aged 58 to 86 simultaneously take multiple classes – ranging from Spanish to music composition to painting – found that after just a few months, the learners had improved not only at Spanish or painting, but on a battery of cognitive tests. They’d rolled back the odometers in their brains by some 30 years, doing better on the tests than a control group who took no classes…
And yet what better remedy for the widespread affliction of “smartphone addiction” than two hours of burning your eyes and brain into 64 squares on a board, trying to analyse an almost infinite variety of moves and countermoves?
Learning new skills also changes the way you think, or the way you see the world. Learning to sing changes the way you listen to music, while learning to draw is a striking tutorial on the human visual system. Learning to weld is a crash course in physics and metallurgy. You learn to surf and suddenly you find yourself interested in tide tables and storm systems and the hydrodynamics of waves. Your world got bigger because you did…
— Tom Vanderbilt, from “The joys of being an absolute beginner – for life” (The Guardian, January 7, 2021)
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That is EXACTLY what I’m saying! Thank you, David!
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
Another amazing daybreak … “‘It’s good to sit and watch this gentle world,’ L said. ‘We tire ourselves out so.’ — Rachel Cusk, Second Place: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 4, 2021).
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Beautiful photos!
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Thank you!
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Magnificent…
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Thank you Mimi!
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A beautiful combination of words and your photos. Hope you took time to sit today 💕
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Thank you Val. I did. We did.
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Happy Mother’s Day!
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Thanks DK 💛 I have not been a mother, but send love and admiration to all the caring nurturing mothers out there. I think you can relate ☺️
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Thank you Val. Sorry for the assumption.
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