It's All About the Experience.

Every evening as the light is falling, I go out to the garden to fetch the bird feeders in. Tonight, something I’ve known for years became more clarified.

When I engage in any activity, I’m not just aware of the activity itself, but even more so of the underlying experience determined by the ambient conditions. So, if I fetch the feeders in on a warm, sultry evening in summer, it’s a mellow experience. If the evening is cold, windy and a little damp, as it was tonight, it’s a melancholy experience. If it’s freezing cold in winter and there’s frost or snow on the ground, it’s a frigid experience. Hence, doing a job in the garden during the day is a completely different experience from doing the same job at twilight. On balance, the experience far outweighs the job itself.

This principle applies to nearly every situation, and I suppose it’s a defining feature of the HSP. You go out on a snowy night to get a bucket of coal, and find yourself looking around at the conditions from which you’re deriving the experience. It’s why I stood on my lawn for ages one still, sub-zero night a few Januarys ago, being almost overwhelmed by the full moon and the effect of its light on the snowy landscape. Nearly every activity is more about the ambient experience than the activity itself.

No doubt it’s what drives the writers, poets, artists and composers. Maybe it’s what gives rise to that condition commonly know as ‘the artistic temperament.’ And it can be both a blessing and a curse.