Making time to stand and stare

I wonder whether you, like me, were taught as a child that it’s rude to stare?

And whether again like me, you learned this poem – with its apparently conflciting message –

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

(Leisure by W. H. Davies)

I was reminded of this poem while watching a video on YouTube recently. A local samba band had ‘invaded’ Sainsbury's on Saturday morning and treated the shoppers to a samba flashmob.   Some shoppers stopped and stared, some  grabbed their mobiles and started filming whilst others simply jigged gently in time to the hypnotic rhythms. I am sure all of them would have mentioned the experience to at least one person they met that day and that they left Sainsbury’s with a smile on their faces. 

There were, though,  others who, as someone who commented on one of the videos, said

just HAD to get on with their shopping - five minutes of fun wasn't going to keep them from their porage (sic) oats!

 Somehow I think that few – if any – of this group will have mentioned it to anyone else. It simply didn’t register with them.

Our senses are constantly bombarded by sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures and feelings and part of our way of dealing with this – and staying sane – is to delete or disregard, often without noticing, things which a quick internal scan shows to be unnecessary or irrelevant. Sometimes, though, we need to recalibrate this internal mechanism  - otherwise we can miss out. When, for example, I am at my cottage in the LakeDistrict, I am mesmerised by the sound of the river running past the balcony ; next time I visit, however, I will be sure to make time to savour the

Streams full of stars, like skies at night

as the sun dances through the trees on the water.

So, go ahead, disregard the inner voice that tells you ‘nice girls (or boys, or women or men) don’t’ – and stop and stare. You may be surprised and delighted by what you’ve been missing.