Thirty-five years ago in an old, out-of-print book titled, Metaphors of Consciousness, depth psychologist Robert Romanyshyn shared a story about two men—a geologist and a botanist—who are walking together through a forest. They’re both walking through the same forest, but the botanist notices the flowers and trips over the rocks…while the geologist notices the rocks and steps on the flowers. There is only one forest, but the two men have quite different experiences of it.
It’s the heart that moved the botanist to be passionately curious about flowers and the geologist to be enamored with rocks. The geologist loves rocks and doesn’t see the flowers. The botanist loves flowers and doesn’t see the rocks.
So what does this mean? Our loves and passions drive our curiosities and subsequently, what we notice. Our hearts give us the lenses that we look through in life.
What are YOU noticing today?