Why Not Take Time to Notice the World Around You?

If you notice the world around you in Hawaii, you might spot a saffron finch.

At some point in my life, I’m not sure when it happened, I woke up and began to notice the world around you and me. Perhaps it started with the birds. For decades I paid attention to the details of day-to-day survival, apart from my career, the daily stuff we all need to do such as tending to home / hearth, taking care of pets, fixing mistakes, nourishing relationships, planning for the future.

Then one day I noticed the birds in my yard had color. It was like the 1939 film, Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy’s house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East. Sepia tones until she opens the door to Technicolor. All of my life, the birds were actually colorful, and I had always thought they were mostly brown. It didn’t stop with the birds. I began to notice trees. Flowers. Rocks. Clouds. Sand. Water. Stuff I had taken for granted, my surroundings were just there.

I had paid more attention to freeways and sidewalks than gravel roads. Maybe it was also the internet, that vast bank of knowledge at my fingertips, suddenly available in the comfort of my own living room. Little by little, I picked up nature guides, began to learn the names of living things and to identify the specifics of the world around me.

With the exception of robins, bluebirds, cardinals and the Fruit Loops bird, Toucan Sam, how could I have thought all birds were brown? How many other people don’t see birds? I don’t think I’m that different from anyone else. Today I will spend hours online just to identify the petals of a flower.

It beats reading about the unbelievable Trump Cabinet picks. That just reads like Fractured Fairy Tales, yet it’s true. Men and women who openly despise and oppose the departments they will lead. Our system is tragically broken.

However, it’s not too late for you, to notice the world around you, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s never too late unless you are dead. I encourage you to take a walk at lunch or wander into your back yard, regardless of the weather, and ask yourself whether you know the names of the life that surrounds you. Is it a mystery? Should it be? Perhaps you will find a new passion . . .

As part of my continued effort to notice the world around me today, I share with you a photo not from my yard, because the little buggers were too fast to capture with my iPhone, but a true photo of the bird just the same. It’s a saffron finch, and they are all over the Big Island of Hawaii, especially by our vacation home in Kailua-Kona.

They are a tanager from South America, and they are not native to Hawaii. They are considered an alien. The males have an orange head and are a vibrant yellow, whereas the females are a more dull olive brown, mixed in with the yellow. The males mate with two females, flashy little guys with apparently great pick-up lines.

Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. You don’t see saffron finches in Sacramento, that’s for sure.