This past weekend, while bulldozers and other large equipment ripped through the woods near my house, I was totally oblivious to the activity until my daddy asked, “What are they doing up there?”

I was embarrassed to confess that I had noticed nothing, but my brother was eager to point out my oversight.  “You don’t pay attention to anything, do you?” he asked. 

Sadly, he is largely right. Despite my giving my students the commission to pay attention to the world around them and then write their observations, I practically have been sleepwalking through my life for the past weeks—ok, months.

Why?

It is easy enough to blame my sad state as society’s fault, falling back on the old standby of too much stress in my life. But this is not really true. While there indeed have been years in my life, and not so very long ago, that I was too stressed to pay attention to almost anything, these days I am relatively calm and non-stressed. So what is wrong with me that I see nothing, hear nothing and know nothing?   Ok, this is hyperbole, but you get the point.

In fact, I actually am an active observer.  The trouble is that I have been so focused on the small things that I somehow missed the bulldozers. For the past several days, I have noted the subtle changes in the color of the tree buds in the valley.  First, I noticed that the tips of the branches seemed to have the slightest touch of purple, so slight that I was not sure I actually could see any difference at all between the tips and the pervasive gray of the limbs and branches.  But then the purple transformed into burgundy so that I could no longer doubt what I was seeing.  And I have seen the willow transform itself almost overnight from its raggedy dead self into a wispy, green promise of spring.  Likewise, I did not overlook the brilliant cardinal hopping across the yard when it though no one was looking.

While all of this may seem well and good, there is a decided problem with my seeing the smallness of the world while overlooking its bigness.  In my version of sleepwalking, I have effectively denied that the hillside trees are being uprooted and plundered because all of my focus has been on the buds on the tree in the valley. So I am selectively observant. See no evil. Hear no evil. And that might work for a while, but only as long as the bulldozers don’t head for the valley, the willow tree, the cardinal’s yard.

Tomorrow, I will try to look beyond my small range of vision and take in the unpleasant as well as the pleasant.

 Descrptive writing is a common assignment  in  most composition courses.  This kind of writing can help us become better observers of the world around us.  This means that we pay attention to not only what we can see, but that we use all of our senses to experience the world. 

Often we overlook taste, smell and touch.  Remember to include these, as much as possible, in your descriptive writing.

Another tip is to use strong verbs and concrete nouns instead of a bunch of adjectives and adverbs.  Ultimately, you want your reader to experience what you do.