I witnessed something last week, and the image is still stuck in my mind. In fact, I wouldn’t have believed I saw it if my husband hadn’t been with me at the time. I even tried to sneak away to grab my camera but I was so afraid to miss out on the experience and vision, that I stopped myself in my tracks to stay and watch in wonder. This means, unfortunately, I have no pictures to share with you.
It was around 10 o’clock at night, known fondly in the Kuhn household as the “PeePee Poopie Hour” by a certain four-legged member of our family. We had stepped outside, biodegradable poop bags in hand, ready to take that last stroll for the evening, only to see IT standing there. It was breathtaking.
A deer. And not just any deer. A really big, beautiful one and walking right down the middle of our street, smack dab in front of our house, dazed and confused.
We were blown away and felt sorry for the poor guy (or gal). Clearly, this wandering visitor had lost his/her way. I could only imagine what was going through its mind. Not knowing any deer personally, I’m not really sure anything in particular is going through a deer mind but I feel confident that it wasn’t ‘hey, let’s hang out in the middle of this street with no trees, grass, rocks or other wildlife.’
You have to keep in mind where we live, too. This is suburbia, folks, all the way. Each of the homes has its required single oak along the sidewalk but beyond the conservation behind our home, we’re talking row after row of houses, cars, streetlamps, and mailboxes…by no means, a wooded or even zoo-like setting. The puzzled creature might just as well sauntered into an indoor shopping mall.
So why do I bring it up here? Not sure really. It’s something I saw but never shared with anyone, and I still find that hard to believe. No tweets, no Facebook status updates, no other blogs. Nada. Yet the vision lingers on my mind.
The deer wandered into a neighbor’s yard without a fence and dashed into the conservation area. We haven’t seen our deer friend since, but it’s left such a lasting impression on me. I’ve wondered to myself since then ‘why did I see that or what should I take away from it?’ And I’d say the greatest thing to come from it was my decision to abide my instinct and stay put to experience it in the moment. In the past, I would have left the scene to grab that camera and spent all of my time planning the souvenir snapshot, so much so that I would have missed out on the exhilarating, awe-inspiring vision of seeing it in person just feet away. Could it be I’m finally living in the moment and not just in constant planning mode?
What about yourself? Have you been witness to something recently that you allowed yourself to get lost in the encounter or were you too busy tweeting about it or taking a photo with your phone and texting your buddy about it? So many of us – me included – let our schedule, our gadgets and our desire to “scoop” get the better of us. We miss out on the colors, the scents, the warmth in the air, the flavors and the feelings – the nuances of the moment we are too busy trying to reproduce for later purpose that we miss out on its current aesthetic value and deeper meaning.
If we want to be writers, how can we expect to write about our experience in great detail if we aren’t really living it?
If we want to be innovators or leaders, how can we hope to identify the success of a concept or creation if we are not willing to observe its failure or results?
If we are truly humans, how can we hope to understand the world around us, if we’re not willing to make ourselves vulnerableg to remain in the moment to experience it?
How lovely. We have a cow pasture backing up to our back yard, and we always see wildlife out there. Sometimes I do stop to take a picture, like when we saw the freshly-hatched sand hill crane with its parents, or when the mama and baby cow got loose IN our back yard, but other times, I just enjoy. Like when the giant river otter scampered across the grass, or when the herd (yes, I just looked this up!) of 10 deer stopped by to say hello. Amazing!