Go Back and Look Again

After nine months of getting entertainment from at-home screens, we can all relate to the search for something new to watch. What's your viewing style? Are you the person who can do the orderly and disciplined method of taking in an episode a night? If you do this, teach me your ways! I can usually stop at two but find it very challenging to go one episode at a time one day at a time. Remember when we had to wait a WHOLE WEEK for a new episode of a show? 

Can you "marathon" binge the entire season in one sitting? (again, if you do this, teach me your ways or at least give me tips on how to have this much time in one chunk) 

No matter how you consume entertainment, I have a recommendation that is at the three-star Michelin restaurant rating level - one that warrants a special journey to taste the cuisine. Call it the Mary "Get Netflix Streaming" star level - because I'd say buy the service if you don't already have it if only to be able to watch an incredible documentary, "My Octopus Teacher".

This cinematic underwater and essentially earthly journey is captured with some amazing camera equipment operated by Craig Foster, an experienced natural history photographer - so it is, if nothing else, a veritable feast for the eyes.

There's no way I can spoil this perfect record of synergy between subject and message. Yet I know that even my endorsement of the film as watch-worthy can offer a filter toward any future viewing even if you've already seen it.

I'm actually writing to the people who have already seen it to say - go back and look at it again. 

You heard me.

If this film taught me anything it is that we can always take another look at something. Foster dove every day for 365 days. He went to the same spot. No matter the weather. Consistently choosing to be an observer. To notice. 

So in line with a yogic perspective on our human experience of this spiritual life we live every day. 

Many of my classes repeat a pose, visiting it multiple times to arrive at a new place within it. That's what Foster did in his free dives off the coast of South Africa. That's what I do when I hike the same trail over and over. Yes, physically we're all in the same place each time, but the journey within can be helped by that. 

Familiarity breeds freedom to pause and look around. 

How you see something the first time you see it can change, if you look again. Being open to seeing something new in an often visited place can feel boring at first, maybe you even reacted negatively to the idea of expanding your understanding of something you thought you had already figured out.

I'm so grateful for the lessons I've learned, the things I've discovered and noticed when I go back and look again.

Try it with this film first - then, you can pick something else to look at again.