We're going to do this one tonight weather permitting.
Beauty spotting
Walk around the city you live in with your lover, a bit like a tourists, bring your camera. Takes turns with the camera taking only 1 good picture of a thing that is beautiful or good. Do not tell the other person what you are taking a picture of or why. The other person must wait if their partner has not yet taken a picture. You will each need to explain why the other person thinks the thing they are taking a picture of is good or beautiful.
Review the pictures one by one at a cafe, park, or restaurant over drinks or dinner.
Go through the pictures sequentially and the person who didn't take the picture must explain why they think the other person took the photo, identifying the element of the picture that the other person intended to capture and why.
Switch it up, keep it lively. You can purposely make up silly reasons or back stories of the people involved or pick the "wrong" thing on the photo to talk about. Compare with the "real" answers of the other person if you'd like to, or you can volunteer your reason, especially if it's way different than the other person's. Find other variations of things to do with the explanations.
Enjoy the conversation and silliness that ensues.
Notes:
If you find yourself impatient with the other person taking pictures, let that be your cue to remember to be patient with your loved ones and let them finish their activities and sentences. We're too eager to make our points or do our activity and not always listening and allowing the other person space/time for their activities and thoughts.
You may notice that in order to keep track of what the other person is doing or looking at or taking pictures of you need to be especially observant. This is purposeful.
By looking for good and beauty around us we become more thankful and aware of how great the place where we live is and the good things happening there.
What a wonderful idea! Please let us know how you get on.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteIt was fun Clare, but it was raining a bit so we ended up ducking into dinner a bit earlier than we wanted to with not that many pictures taken. (The Chinese place in the Carosel plaza downtown, yummy!)
The silly reasons and backstories only enjoyed moderate success, but it was a fun thing to find the beauty in the world around us. We found several things that we hadn't seen before. We also had several things where the other person was able to find beautiful things in the picture that the other person hadn't.
It made for fun dinner conversation, and we both tend not to linger after eating, but this time we had more to talk about and pictures to see. It was fun.
So often we talk about the practicalities of life and the things we want to work on and improve in our family life. This fun little thing totally changed that dynamic and helped us focus on each other and good things around us.
I'll post the pictures if I get a chance.