Hello Dear Ones,
I hope your new year has gotten off to a good start.
The other morning, alone in the early still-darkness, out loud, just to myself, I blurted, “Play attention! “. I don’t remember what I was doing; (‘cuz I wasn’t playing attention, of course.) I just remember how surprising it was to hear “play”, being used with “attention”, popping out of my mouth. I laughed!
Yes, I do need to play attention!
Kenneth and I had plans for New Year’s Day; to fetch some friends who needed a ride from the airport. Then their flight was rescheduled and 2022 started off as a “what do I want to do today?” day. One of my favorite kind of days, by the way.
If you’ve never been to the Pasadena Tournament of Rose Parade in person, you might not understand why watching that parade is usually part of my New Year’s Day. I grew up next door to Pasadena and have a full spectrum of wonderful parade experiences and memories tucked into my heart.
A great thing about watching the parade here in the Dominican Republic is the time difference; 8am in California is noon here, which makes catching it in real-time easy. The challenging part is finding a live-feed that is available here. YouTube came through and Kenneth and I settled into our version of watching the parade; shifting attention from computer and art projects back and forth to the parade, not giving stellar attention to any of it.
It was a beautiful parade filled with creativity, delight and sentiment. The parade ended with the commentator saying …
What A Perfect Way To Begin a New Decade!
A NEW DECADE! What? Backup… Yep, We had just watched the entire 2020 Tournament of Roses Parade!
Now, there are several threads I could follow here. LOL. But there is one that has been especially interesting to me; how I build my experience around assumptions.
Looking back over the parade, I realize there were lots of clues pointing to the fact that we had time traveled into the past.
I had been impressed and grateful that they weren’t focusing on Covid. (I didn’t notice they never mentioned it)
I didn’t have a thought about people being masked or not. (No one was wearing a mask to remind me to wonder about it)
The parade looked extraordinarily “white” for the racial changes I had hoped were happening. (Disappointing, but the parade is in Pasadena, after all)
And then there was the half time entertainment. Kenneth recognized the recorded segment. He even said, “Hey, that was from last year!” (hmmm, the parade had been cancelled last year) And in the video clip there was a small banner with 2020 on it. That did tickle suspicion that something was off; but, when the commentator said “My daughter could watch that video clip over and over and over again”, I thought he was insinuating that the clip had been from a previous parade; who knows why? (Probably Covid related, we reasoned. That explains everything!)
Ok, there were even a few other clues but I don’t want to expose myself any further.
Yep, ends up we watched a re-run of a parade we had watched 2 years ago. Kenneth and I laughed. We laughed a lot. We are still laughing.
And, being me, I’m still reflecting about it.
Isn’t it precious and terrifying how my thinking can twist and turn to make things match my perspective or desire? Aren’t I often wiggling things around or changing angles, looking for evidence to solidify my assumptions; prove I’m right; make myself feel safe; or to base a decision on? I don’t think I’m the only one who does that.
I’ll have belly laughs about the 2020-2022 Rose Parade for a long time.
And, with all of that, I wonder how I’m going to Play Attention now?
With playful love and attention,
Sharon
