Look Around
Squirrels, birds, chipmunks: they all look around a lot. They move—quickly—then stop and look around. For many animals, this is life and death stuff because the cat, coyote and hawk are also looking around. They do it a little differently because they’re predators. They look differently in both senses of the word. Their movements are more fluid, and steady and they are, let’s say, carefully shopping instead of trying to get through a haunted house.
When we look around these days it’s often on-line or maybe in the fridge. We don’t examine our surroundings like either a chipmunk or a bear. We behave as if we literally inhabit a separate world.
This is OK until it isn’t. I was preoccupied with a thought one day as I stepped out from between two cars into the street. Another car was coming down my side of the street, but I didn’t realize it until I felt the turbulent air on my left arm as it passed by.
There are other reasons to be observant and watchful these days, unfortunately, but it’s a habit that can be developed without too much fuss. I would make an analogy with driving: you simply glance up from your phone every so often and… NO!!! Please put your phone down while you’re driving! As I was saying, just like when you’re driving, you cultivate a relaxed awareness of all the traffic around you: just noticing the cars, the people, the bicycles and how they’re moving. Just looking around like you have a casual interest in everything that’s going on.
One more example: if you’ve ever seen two farmers talking you may have noticed that they stand facing roughly 90 degrees to each other. There are a couple of reasons for this. They can keep an eye on the fields, the weather and the roads. A tremendous amount of Midwestern conversation is driven solely by the current and forecasted weather conditions, and it’s considered polite to wave when you see a neighbor on their way into town. (The continuous examination of the landscape during conversation might also be to avoid making prolonged eye contact and the subsequent awkwardness.) But the farmers might also be displaying a behavior from our heritage: scanning the savannah for weather, neighbors and danger.