Common Sense

God didn’t gift me with a lot of common sense.

Fortunately, He did gift me with a whole team of guardian angels—whose presence I always seem to feel about the same time the words “Wow, that could have been really bad!” escape my lips.

Not only am I capable of doing some pretty stupid things, but it also seems to take me longer than the normal person to realize the mess I’m in.

Yesterday, I climbed up the ladder and started in on the fluorescent light fixture in the kitchen.  Ever since I figured out how to pop the cover off last week and access the bulbs (after two years of no light in the kitchen), I have considered myself the master of changing out the fluorescent bulb.

For whatever reason, though, every bulb I had put in seemed to be bad.  I had one day of light last week.

One day. 

And then it was back to flickering and shadow shows on the wall.

Yesterday, though, I figured maybe it wasn’t the bulb but just the connection and that if I just twisted the bulb, carefully, I could get it to shine. 

I didn’t want to have to keep climbing up and down the ladder though, so I decided to leave the light on, so I could see, in real time, how the connection was holding up.

I was fiddling, unsuccessfully, with the bulb for a few seconds when I noticed that my finger was starting to hurt.  Huh, I thought.  Why is my finger hurting?  Actually, why is it burning?

It was at this point that I realized I was shocking myself, having left the light on—and that it had taken me five seconds to realize that this was happening, which meant it had taken me about five seconds longer than the average Joe, to pull my finger away.

Wow, that could have been really bad, I said to myself, staring at my finger, which somehow had escaped unblemished from its brush with electricity.

Perhaps, though (in my defense), it’s not so much a lack of common sense that gets me into trouble, but a lack of awareness of the world around me, of myself, of my needs, of my place in the world.

It is a lack of awareness that I think plagues everyone in various ways.

There is so much in this world to distract us.  It is why I have enjoyed my morning walks in the dark so much.  When I can barely see my hand in front of my face, when the flashlight only illuminates fog and mist, when everything is so silent I have mistaken the echo of my own footfalls for a stranger coming up behind me—where there are so few distractions, I find myself more mindful.

Think of all the things that distract you throughout the day, big and small.  How many times have you felt your phone vibrate in your pocket only to realize that your phone isn’t even in your pocket?  We are so conditioned to distraction we have come to expect it even during moments of silence.

I arrived at the Wetlands one morning months ago to find they had scheduled a 5k there that morning and had installed massive, towering speakers pumping out the latest Taylor Swift song.

I was horrified.

Less for Taylor Swift and more for the speakers.

The noise.

When we think of pollution, we think of smog in the skies and spills of oil in the rivers and seas.  We may have even heard that light pollution is preventing us from seeing the night sky, obscuring our view of the stars.

But how often do we think of noise pollution?

The animals at the Wetlands, both predator and prey, are super sensitive to sound.  It’s why I can startle a Great Blue Heron with the crunch of my foot on gravel.  It’s why deer can be spooked by a dog brought to the Wetlands for a walk and standing more than a football field away.

If you are a wild animal, again predator or prey, and you are not hyperaware of your environment, you are dead.

Which is why bringing something like stadium-sized speakers to the Wetlands can be so damaging to the environment.

We, ourselves, are so bombarded with noise and light and texts and pictures and … everything, that in order to survive the onslaught, we have learned to tune things out.  We buy noise cancelling headphones.

Think about that for a second.

We live in a world where we must buy noise cancelling headphones.

But, unfortunately, we cannot pick and choose what we listen to.  It is all or nothing.

We choose the headphones and we lose awareness of a tiny part of the world.

And that is only the beginning.

I chose a walk at the Wetlands this morning, just after sunrise.  I chose a path away from the snowbirds.  I chose not to speak to the couple I passed who were watching anhinga nests.  I chose not to speak, not to be unsocial, but so as not to interrupt, not to become a distraction.

I chose to take deep breaths.

I chose to stand a long way back from the deer when I took their picture.

And when I startled several herons gathering material for their nests, I apologized.

I chose to rest when I got tired.

I chose to be okay with being tired.

I chose to be blessed to simply be.

Sometimes it’s just common sense.