officially, i recommend looking at a bird
i can’t help but notice that a lot of my peers and younger people don’t get a lot of enjoyment out of nature. and i don’t mean that as a “blurrhh the millennials don’t know what’s good for them, blrurrh log off and go outside” way either
what i mean is: have you ever actually taken the time to look at an animal in the yard and notice all the things that are great about it? like, there’s a difference between reblogging photos of fat birds on tumblr and doing that. you can actually get sustained joy out of staring at a pigeon or even a particularly cool tree, and it’s not taught in schools but it’s still something you can practice!!
why would you want to practice that, tumblr user 2-face? some thoughts:
the multiple studies showing the benefits to mood and stress-related health you can experience by looking at nature: not just the recently shared ‘stare at an aquarium for 10 minutes’ study but older known stuff like ‘stick your head out the window and look at a tree for 10 minutes and your blood pressure will go down and some of the symptoms of your depression and anxiety will be alleviated’
got adhd, like me? feel like you’re boiling your brain alive in a simmering pot of bad thoughts when you walk from point A to point B without having your dopamine rectangle firmly in front of your face? no problem, check this out *looks at a bush on the way* wow whoa woo-hoo
increase your empathy for other living things with this 1 easy trick (thinking about them a lot and noticing their inherent value)
if you plan to have kids you can pass this onto your children and they will likely have a better time and be less dependent on predatory technologies for their fun (read the book The Last Child In The Woods for more about that)
if you do art, your ability to draw nature could benefit from looking at nature more and understanding its nuances and then you can get commissioned to draw fursonas and make the big bucks ;)
ok so how do you practice looking at a bird, tumblr user 2-face? well stop calling me that, and:
step 1: find a bird. if you live in an urban area, this will probably be a pigeon, sparrow, or seagull. now step 2: look at that little bastard.
examine these qualities: the shape and silhouette of the bird. how does its body shape indicate the type of flying it has to do and the places it inhabits? how does its beak indicate the type of thing it’s meant to eat? what does it actually eat now? does its beak work against it in the modern world or aid it? if you had to design a human version of the bird, what shape might the human have?
look at its locomotion. does it fly in short bursts or long swoops? can it turn easily in midair? when it has to travel on the ground, does it walk or hop? check out the way a pigeon’s head bobs as it wanders. check out the interesting steps a starling takes. look at the little dashing run of a blackbird and how its body stays at the same level throughout.
look at how alert it is. what is a bird looking at? what is a bird thinking? watch the blackbird delicately flip leaves to hunt for bugs. watch the pigeons congregate in little flocks and peck at the grass like hens. watch the seagulls bully each other and descend ravenously on a dropped chip. watch the sparrow fly with a tiny stick in its beak!
look how it interacts with other things. these pigeons are friends and groom each other. this blackbird is a mother, and if she thinks you are going near her children, she fakes a broken wing and hobbles away, enticing you to follow her. these sparrows all go up to the highest and wobbliest branch and turn to balance in the wind. that seagull is young and has not lost its baby feathers, and it shelters uncomfortably from the rain and begs for scraps. look at that bird pulling on a leaf, cracking a snail on a rock, playing with its neighbor. how smart they are! what can we learn from them?
repeat as often as possible.
if you feel like you’ve mastered that, here’s your advanced level looking-at-nature quest: how can you apply the above steps to less relatable things, like a tree, a rose, or a spider? what do you like about those things? what do you notice? what can we learn from them? what are their daily lives like? how can we improve our relations with them?
