The other day i played a little game with myself while riding my motorcycle home in teeming Taipei traffic. i had just gone to the Heping Flower Market to shop for a birthday present for my girlfriend (its a huge outdoor market set up underneath a freeway ramp), and i ended up with about six plants stuffed into my motorcycle bags and hanging from my handlebars. It's common to see scooters loaded down with all sorts of goods while slaloming through the plethora of vehicles, so i was not an oddity. But being that i felt burdened and awkward with all my plants, i started noticing other bikes which were laden with goods. One man had a huge crate mounted on the back of his cycle for hauling things. Others had various bulky objects stuffed at their feet for carrying home. It's logical that if you dont drive a car you're gonna cram as much as you can onto your only mode of transportation, and for most Taiwanese peole it's their scooters.
Noticing this phenomenon transitioned into noticing everything i was participating in - just for the hell of it. i started a kind of game in my mind: "What all do i have around me right now? What is this moving scene that i am a part of?" And so i began to catalogue everything in a way that seemed at once to amuse me, taking away my boredom, and at the same time bumping up my awareness a few degrees, which seeemed to make me more alert. It went like this: "i just left the flower market and am carrying a bunch of plants hanging in bags on my cycle. The sun is beating down and i am sweating pretty profusely. To my left is a portly man, not really fat except for his belly. Physically he could almost be the Chinese version of my father sitting on a scooter. He looks hot and is wearing an extra pair of sleeves that cover his forearms but are not attached to his t-shirt. Now he pulls up his t-shirt and lets his belly hang out and cool off in the minute breeze. In front of me are about 15 scooters, a few cars. On my right is the man with the mounted crate on his motorcycle. He must use it for his livelihood, whatever that may be. We're moving now, sluggish at first, lurching forward as one mob, gaining speed. The wind now is pleasant because i am moving. Interspersed along this road are openings under the overpass on my left, and taxis and regular cars perch at these holes, waiting to emerge, merge with traffic. Trees have began studding the road and they make me more at ease than where i just was." And so on...
i did this mental cataloguing in much more detail at the time, taking inventory of every possible stimuli my mind could process, until i got bored with the game. But i realized that my mind was active and working, and listing my environment was much more interesting than i would have thought. In fact, the act of doing it made me realize that the world around me was much more interesting than i normally would give it credit for. On most days we just commute to wherever, and if it's often the same location we won't give much creative thought to what is going on around us. We don't see much interest in the environment at all because we have "seen it all before." But i believe how much of things we really see depends on how actively our minds are engaged in the experience we are having. If we believe the experience is commonplace and mundane, then that is how it will appear. If, on the other hand, we delve a bit deeper into the multitude of processes occuring simultaneously before us, things become interesting, and our minds becoming enthusiastic about playing the game.
There might also be some memory advantage to this activity, meaning if you consciously calalogue events or objects in your mind, you are rooting them a bit more than you probably would otherwise. It's like with writing; whenever you have an experience and write it down, you are more likely to remember it than if you don't.
In any case, try the game and see how you like it. The next time you are commuting anywhere, start narrating to yourself what is happening in your life at this exact moment, all the things you see and hear and smell and feel. You will probably find that your awareness jumps up a notch.
