As with my previous post, here I've started with a photo and wondered what I wanted to find out in it.
Why pick a picture of some Swiss chard growing in a flower bed in a small French town rather than some of the other wonderful photos of nature that I have lined up ready to go?
Obviously, to me, there's the interesting juxtaposition of flowers and vegetable so that I see a contrast. It's almost like a joke in which the funny bit is the unexpected connection between one thing and another.
Is that what the designer/gardener had in mind? Is it a fashion? It might be. I saw globe artichokes in flower arrangements in central Paris too - but they do have beautiful purple flowers and this chard doesn't have any unless not eaten and left to flower for seed.
It's got a beautiful touch of red along the stalk and leaf veins. It's also a great shape mixed in with the contrasting shapes of the other foliage. There's a few reddish pink flowers too that go well with the red in the chard.
In fact, if one looks at it without the distinctions of 'fruit and vegetable' it's just nice display of mixed foliage and flowers.
Anything at all to do with business and work?
Yes. Well, I think so.
The sequence is:
1) Be attracted to a particular natural scene or detail.
2) Look carefully.
3) Get past any preconceptions of why one is noticing.
4) Look carefully at what is actually there.
5) Think about whether (like me with the fruit and veg distinction) you had to get past a preconception to see clearly.
6) Wonder if it's a preconception you could usefully ditch,
When reviewing and planning in one's work perhaps that's actually quite useful. It's a matter of moving from one's own reflections on nature and internal reverie and finding useful, pertinent messages for practical application.
Wondering what I'm on about? OK, completely hypothetical example because I'm actually working at home today. suppose I follow that line of thought through about preconceptions and then go into a boardroom meeting? Might I be ready to REALLY notice who people are and what they are saying - rather than through the haze of a filter of 'fruit/vegetable' - right/wrong or whatever
This is all with or without taking photos and blogging about it of course. It's about making use of one's stray noticings and thoughts by noticing any potentially useful messages.
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