We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. (Thornton Wilder)
Learn the art of being aware, our success depends upon our power to perceive, to observe, and to know. Keen observation is a chief factor in the success of all great businessmen, executives, artists and military leaders. Men and women go about the world unaware of the beauty, the goodness, and the glories in it. A greater poverty than that caused by lack of money is the poverty of unawareness.
Helen Keller said, hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which nature provides. But of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful. As you open your awareness, life will improve of itself, you won’t even have to try.
Seven men went through a field, one after another. One was a farmer, he saw only the grass; the next was an astronomer, he saw the horizon and the stars; the physician noticed the standing water and suspected malaria; he was followed by a soldier, who glanced over the ground, found it easy to hold, and saw in a moment how the troops could be disposed; then came the geologist, who noticed the boulders and the sandy soil; after him came the real-estate broker, who pondered how the line of the house lots should run, where would be the drive-way, and the stables. The poet admired the shadows cast by some trees, and still more the music of some thrushes and meadow lark.
