Amateur Eyes

     We are constantly missing things just because we tend to be in our own little world. What I do is that I just focus on my music, when I’m walking somewhere or doing an exercise in the gym, or just listen and worry over my own thoughts. This has been quite the talk on numerous of documentaries and interviews. They talk about how basically you, most of the time, don’t notice that someone is in trouble because you’re worried about your own problems.  This can all be presented on the beautiful and quite literally, eye opener essay called “Amateur Eyes” by Alexandra Horowitz.

     Horowitz starts with two sentences that glued me more and more to her essay. These sentences are: “Right now, you are missing the vast majority of what is happening around you. You are missing the events unfolding in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you” (Horowitz, 1).  To me, these sentences represent the whole idea of her essay about how we can easily get focused on one thing and lose sight from everything that’s around us. I think that is impossible to concentrate on everything that’s happening at the moment because our mind can do so much. But when you get rid of all the distractions, your worries or music, you can always see something new wherever you go.

      I learned this from the ‘experiments’ that Horowitz did to conclude her essay. I loved how, in doing so, she used the perspective of her dog just because he or she could see, hear and smell everything. “What my dog showed me was that my attention invited along attention’s companion: inattention to everything else” (Horowitz 2). Thanks to her dog, she “perceived ordinary elements I was missing” (Horowitz, 3). Whenever we use a different a perspective we see new thing. Just as in the tourist project. Where when I acted like a tourist, I appreciated and learned new things from Puerto Rico that I have never known before. I reflected over how I’m so used to seeing the places or the things form my home that I don’t look for something new to appreciate from them.

In this essay, Horowitz tells us that she wants us to perceive all the ordinary things from a place because to me, that’s where the magic starts. When we get rid of all thoughts and distractions that’s worrying us, we can see all that flowers that are in the pavement, how many trees or how funny people act when they think no one is watching them.  For example, today while I was driving home, I was so busy worrying and stressing about my exams that I didn’t notice the beautiful sunset that was outside. It immediately erased my mind and calmed me. Because “the capacity to attend is ours; we just forget how to turn it on” (Horowitz, 3). Forgetting for one moment all of your worries can help you appreciate the beautiful things outside your comfort zone. From now, I want to see all things that I missed when I walked to an old place because I was busy or distracted in my own little world. “In this book, I am looking for what it is that I miss, everyday, right in front of me, while walking around the block” (Horowitz, 15).