We’ve had this table and these chairs for 20 years or so. I never tire of looking at how they come together from different angles in the changing light from the window behind.
That appreciation involves both my head and my heart, but it occupies a completely different place in my life than my memories of the countless meals we’ve enjoyed around the table with friends and family members. Those also involve my head and my heart, but the complete separation between these two realms of experience with the same table and chairs is almost easier to explain as a result of my being two different people than anything else.
As far as I know, I’m not living with Alzheimer’s or dementia. But this capacity to keep looking at the same thing—while seeing it and appreciating it in somewhat different ways—is a little peculiar. It’s all more so when the looking and appreciation occurs while simultaneously forgetting whatever social life I’ve experienced in the same setting.
So, then, where does this kind of attentive and appreciative looking fit with what it means to be alive? When we can no longer move, talk, or claim someone else’s attention, for example, will we still be selecting what we want to look at or avoid seeing? If so, there ought to be room for that somewhere in the art of living.