It's a visual age.
So ever so often you try to convey some sense of the wonders of the underwater world to non divers and find that you either get the old someone-elses-holiday-snapshot reaction (which I can sort of relate to) or more interestingly the sense that they feel like they already know what you're talking about.
Because they've seen the adverts, and they've watched discovery (and probably also at one point someone-elses-holiday-snapshots).
They are experienced viewers and pre-experienced divers. That is maybe not such a huge problem as it can usually be remedied with a dose of the real thing. However there are individuals with whom this visual pre-experience thing seems so deeply ingrained that, even diving for real, they seem to miss out on the actual experience.
"I've gone to school - so I know what teaching is"
"I've watched a play so I know what acting is"
"I've been to 30 metres, with a pothead instructor, on my open water course so I know what deep diving is".
Been there, done that, bored now. Life being routine even before it's been lived.
Speaking for myself, diving a lot, the poetry of it all can so easily become routine unless I constantly remind myself that there is so much to learn, and see and wonder about and that my own outlook is the only limit to the depth of the experience.
Routine is not about the world being the same. It is about ones view stagnating and ones ability, will or drive to look for the overwhelming variety being dulled.
It takes effort to maintain a sense of the poetry and freshness of every moment. And that effort must be directed at recognising and breaking free of the sense of pre-experience and the facile numbing of routine.
In that process one may find that ones self-image as a pre-experienced know-it-all
or the pride in ones actual, possibly professional, experience and routine are things that must be shed in order to maintain the sense of wonder.
I just needed to get that of my chest thankyouverymuch.
Oh and P.S.
- For further inspiration watch "Smoke"
- For practical application go to Sipadan and try to maintain your wonder at turtles and white tips (being low on cash these days I work to maintain my wonder at sand and empty beer bottles).
So ever so often you try to convey some sense of the wonders of the underwater world to non divers and find that you either get the old someone-elses-holiday-snapshot reaction (which I can sort of relate to) or more interestingly the sense that they feel like they already know what you're talking about.
Because they've seen the adverts, and they've watched discovery (and probably also at one point someone-elses-holiday-snapshots).
They are experienced viewers and pre-experienced divers. That is maybe not such a huge problem as it can usually be remedied with a dose of the real thing. However there are individuals with whom this visual pre-experience thing seems so deeply ingrained that, even diving for real, they seem to miss out on the actual experience.
"I've gone to school - so I know what teaching is"
"I've watched a play so I know what acting is"
"I've been to 30 metres, with a pothead instructor, on my open water course so I know what deep diving is".
Been there, done that, bored now. Life being routine even before it's been lived.
Speaking for myself, diving a lot, the poetry of it all can so easily become routine unless I constantly remind myself that there is so much to learn, and see and wonder about and that my own outlook is the only limit to the depth of the experience.
Routine is not about the world being the same. It is about ones view stagnating and ones ability, will or drive to look for the overwhelming variety being dulled.
It takes effort to maintain a sense of the poetry and freshness of every moment. And that effort must be directed at recognising and breaking free of the sense of pre-experience and the facile numbing of routine.
In that process one may find that ones self-image as a pre-experienced know-it-all
or the pride in ones actual, possibly professional, experience and routine are things that must be shed in order to maintain the sense of wonder.
I just needed to get that of my chest thankyouverymuch.
Oh and P.S.
- For further inspiration watch "Smoke"
- For practical application go to Sipadan and try to maintain your wonder at turtles and white tips (being low on cash these days I work to maintain my wonder at sand and empty beer bottles).
