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Are You Noticing This? - RyanHoliday.net
Honestly, itâs been so bad for so long, I didnât even notice. When we moved out to rural Texas in 2015, there was basically no cell phone service at our house or on our dirt road. We tried to fix it at firstâI even put a booster on the roofâbut it didnât work. I suppose we could have switched providersâŠbut that seemed like a pain. We had a landline and wifi-calling, though both were unreliable, especially in storms or when one of our neighbors would cut the AT&T line while grading the road. So we got used to it. We accepted that when we were out and about at home, our phones couldnât make calls or send textsâŠfor over ten years. It was almost predictable, Iâd be back somewhere on my property and some incredibly important call would come throughâŠwith just enough service for me to answer and not be able to talk. Thatâs why it sort of snuck up on me the last couple months that my phone had full reception when I was out checking on the cows. Or when I was walking the dog. Or even out in the garage. An inconvenience that had been part of our lives for so long just suddenly went away. And it took me some time to notice it. Which is something life does, by the way, it gets better and we donât notice. Because weâre so focused on whatâs going wrong. Because weâre not paying attention. Because the algorithm and the news cycle is biased. I thought the same thing as I was passing through the Austin airport this morning. For the last two years or so, security had been a mess because of a major construction project. As I landed at the American gates and walked to the exit, I noticed that finally the new security entrance was almost done. They were testing it right then. The construction had been background noise for so long I had stopped perceiving that, slowly, progress was also happening. And that progress, eventually, inevitably, leads to a completion. Having kids is like this too. You are so in the thick of it that you can be blind to the passing of time. Every haircut and nail trim means theyâre getting a little older. Same too for every shirt they grow out of. There are obvious benchmarks like walking and potty training and first words but a lot of the other moments are more subtle. You donât notice the moment you stop lugging a stroller everywhere. There is no one moment when an infant becomes a toddler or a toddler a teenager. These transitions donât announce themselves. And youâre also so in the thick of it, dealing with so many problems, that you donât always notice the ways theyâre getting better, like as humans. You donât notice the night that was the last night they woke you up at 3 a.m. You take for granted the day they started getting into the car themselves and buckling their own seatbelt. You donât see the way theyâre becoming more independent, more competent. Itâs not obvious how the things youâre teaching are becoming values and habits, but if youâre doing it right, they are. And itâs easy to miss that everyday this person is becoming a better person, that you are succeeding at this really hard thing. I guess what I am saying is that itâs important that we stop and see this. How often do we update our world view to account for what has been fixed, for whatâs gotten better, for sources of annoyance that have been eliminated? Or are we carrying around zombie frustrations and anxieties and grievances that we canât seem to shake? Marcus Aureliusâwho had every reason to see the world as dark and brokenâhad this remarkable capacity to notice beauty and progress everywhere. As he was dealing with wars and plagues and betrayals and the loss of loved ones, as his health was failing, he was also writing about the ordinary way that âbaking bread splits in places and those cracks, while not intended in the bakerâs art, catch our eye and serve to stir our appetite,â or the âcharm and allureâ of natureâs process, the âstalks of ripe grain bending low, the frowning brow of the lion, the foam dripping from the boarâs mouth.â This is someone who cultivated what you might call a poetâs eyeâthe discipline to notice the beauty in the banal, the mundane, the everyday. He was able to see beauty anywhereâŠwhich is really important when you live in ugly times. Thereâs a tendency, especially right now, to look at everything and see only whatâs broken. And yesâthereâs plenty thatâs broken. But itâs worth remembering, stuff has always been broken. Ancient Greece had earthquakes and horrible storms and natural disasters. People suffered. People were killed. People stole the money intended to help those people. Ancient Rome had tyrants and bullies. It had pointless cruelty and systemic injustices. Itâs always been this way. For centuries, people have fought over minuscule differences. Their governments have been dysfunctional. Their traditions seemed like they were falling apart. Stuff was changing. Stuff was stressful. Stuff sucked. Itâs not only always been like thisâŠbut itâs almost always been worse. You can look out at the news and despair about things. Or you can zoom out and see progress. You can focus on the bad people and miss that the bad people today are almost certainly better than the bad people back then. Even the people you disagree with and dislike politically are not selling their enemies into slavery, sending children to work in the mines and doing science experiments on minoritiesâthings that were not only common in Zeno and Marcus Aureliusâs time, but common enough where you live not that long ago! For all the things it is easy to lament about the world, itâs disputable that we live in a time of abundance, medicine, knowledge, and opportunityâthings our ancestors could not [...]
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