Suburban Subdivisions Are Beautiful
Reframing how we approach the ordinary
Photo by Sergio Souza
I frequently go on walks with my dog/personal assistant, Nala. We live in what one might call a cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood. Despite the 4 different floor plans seen throughout the neighborhood, there are many ways in which it is not cookie cutter. Our slice of suburban paradise is located in the middle of a fairly rural area, we don’t have sidewalks or an HOA, and unlike many developments, every house does not look the exact same.
Yet, there are only so many ways to walk through any neighborhood. There are 3 ways I can walk my dog if I’m feeling up to a shorter walk(which is always the case in these temperatures) or up to 5 ways for longer walks.
So, as one might imagine, it can get repetitive rather quickly.
As an antidote to the repetition, I try to notice the little things when we walk every day. The plants that are blooming more than they were yesterday, the beautiful contrast between the day lilies and the roses outside of that one house, the shapes of the clouds in the sky- I try to approach it all as if I’ve never seen it before, with a perspective of awe.
It’s not easy, but I think it’s important.
Where Does the World End/ Where Do We Begin?
In her book, The Enchanted Life, Sharon Blackie discusses the idea of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He expanded upon a school of thought called phenomenology. Phenomenology had no roots in science- that’s not really what I’m here to discuss today- and was founded by Moravian philosopher Edmund Husserl to “look at the way the world makes itself known to us … not as it really is, but how we experience it”.
Husserl wanted to explore the ideas of what was really inside of us and what was actually outside of us, and how we determined where “inside” and “outside” began and ended.
Merleau-Ponty expanded on Husserl’s ideas by saying that we experience the world because we are intertwined with it. It is a part of us, and we are a part of it.
Simply, the world perceives us as much as we perceive it.
The world shapes us as much as we shape it.
Not Tourists in The World
To humor this idea is to give the world- rocks, trees,sky- the property which humans have so long claimed as theirs. Awareness. Perception. It also gives the world a power which modern human civilization is hesitant to relinquish. To allow the world to shape us would be to acknowledge that we cannot dominate this Earth, but that we are interdependent with it.
Merleau-Ponty believed that this interconnection with the world arose from literal scientific perception. We are returning to science in this field of phenomenology. To smell lavender, certain chemicals are taken in through the nose. They penetrate the cribiform plate, activating certain neurons that signal to your brain exactly what you’re smelling via the olfactory nerve. By taking in the scent of lavender, it becomes a part of you. It’s in you, Monteau-Ponty argued, and you are in it. The two of you are not separate.
Whether or not this lands for you- and admittedly it’s all a bit heady- moving through the world as if it can sense my presence has allowed the sense of wonder I seek on my everyday walks with my dog to arise more easily.
“Who’s to say the birds in the trees aren’t singing your praises?” Blackie argues.
Who is to say? My secret has become this - to imagine everything in the world as alive, aware, and having an active role as I have been told I do.
My question, then, is this: what if we all lived this way?
Blackie says, “We are not tourists in this world, driving from place to place, insulated from it.”
Losing Ourselves in Search of the Perfect Shot
This quote inspired this piece. I’ve had a note that simply says, “taking pictures of beauty is a shallow way to connect with it” sitting in my writing ideas folder since I went to Europe last month, but I haven’t known quite how to expand on it until now.
This idea has been marinating in my mind since I went to Iguazu Falls in 2019. It’s one of the seven natural wonders of the world. I went to the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side, and the first day we covered the Argentinian side. The very first thing we saw was the largest waterfall of the over 200 waterfalls that make up this system of waterfalls (cataratas).
Devil’s Throat is about 240 feet tall, but it’s not the height that’s impressive-it’s the sheer amount of water, pouring in from all directions. The visual and auditory experience is literally so much bigger than you, and you simply feel so small. You can’t see over the top of the waterfall, where you are standing. All you see is this hole water is pouring into, uncertain if there is any end, and you hear a constant thundering.
In front of this all-encompassing experience are tourists taking pictures on selfie sticks.
I don’t want to shame them too much - my picture was eventually taken too. For minutes, all I did was stand there. In awe. I struggle to understand how the first thing anyone could do was turn their back on this magnificent piece of Earth and take a picture and walk away.
I saw it happen, over and over again.
Again, in Europe this summer. I took pictures, too - I am not guilt free- but as I watched my fellow tourists looking for the best angle or setting up an effortless shot, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were connected to this Earth or to each other at all.
My favorite trips were the ones where I got away from the touristy spots. My hike down to Oberhaus, with a river accompanying me. Hiking with my fiance away from Maneggio in the picturesque Italian countryside.
If we approach the Earth with a sense of interconnectedness, than a camera that is not mindfully used easily puts us back in a position of domination, of separation from the Earth.
It takes us out of observing and traveling from a place of awe and puts us back into traveling so that we can keep up with everyone else, always onto the next place.
What if we had the courage to find our suburban subdivisions as beautiful, as worthy of our awe, as the Italian countryside? As a Greek island in an Instagram post?
How could that change our relationship with the world we live in?
