Can't Take My Eyes Off You

We inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the colour blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

David Whyte

Last Sunday, I walked through some beautiful public gardens in London’s Marylebone. It was a perfect spring morning and on almost every bench sat a person with their eyes fixated on a small rectangular device they held in their hands. I could easily have been one of them. Often, I am, utilising ‘spare’ minutes to catch up on emails, or see what I’ve missed on Instagram.

A few weeks ago, though, I took myself on something called an Artist’s Date. This is a term coined by the writer Julia Cameron, whose book, The Artist’s Way (a great one for reclaiming one’s creativity) you may have come across. Artist’s Dates are one of the foundation stones of her method, and involve taking yourself off somewhere alone (ideally once a week), to do something you find enjoyable and inspiring.

I went to the movies, and then for tea and cake at a café in Soho. Obviously, I didn’t sit in the cinema with my eyes glued to my smartphone! But as soon as I arrived at the café, I pulled it out of my bag thinking I’d ‘catch up’ while I waited for my tea to arrive. Unusually though, I put it away again immediately. Having been so submerged in the exquisite world of the movie, I wanted to hold onto its magic a bit longer and realised staring at my phone wouldn’t support that.

Instead I sat at my window table and drank in the world around me: conversations taking place, passersby ambling along Greek Street. On the bus home, my phone remained in my bag, and I sat on the top deck watching my city slide past me, and noticing things for the first time, such as the beautiful decorations on the 100-year-old façade of Heal’s, the furniture shop on Tottenham Court Road.

Since then, I’ve been trying to carve out more pockets of unfilled space, rather than habitually reaching for my phone in a quiet moment, in the erroneous belief this is a good thing, as I’m being productive and getting stuff done. I am, but it’s at a cost:

The cost of missing out on engaging with a rich and living world that’s unfolding right in front of me; a world that can soak into all five of my senses, and remind me that I too am part of its flow. Plus, I’m giving my mind much-needed breathing space; space in which I’m not doing or producing, but simply receiving the world, without any agenda. This feels like a spa for my brain. And unsurprisingly, crafting this space feeds our creativity. It’s when ideas can drip into our subconscious without us even realising, or solutions to existing problems can bubble up of their own accord.