Unconscious Choices

I’ve decided where my wallet goes when I get home: the small table by the entrance. It’s a rule I set for myself, to keep the place from getting cluttered. But before I know it, the wallet ends up on my desk, on the bookshelf, or on the dining table. In winter, I leave it in my coat pocket, hang the coat in the closet, and then go looking for the wallet, convinced I’ve lost it.

In my head I intend to put it in “the decided place,” but unconsciously I set it down all over the house. My hands move before my mind does, and I keep making the same mistake.

The rules I set for myself stop being followed at some point without my noticing.

The same thing happens when I photograph.

However hard I try to catch a fresh image, I sometimes end up shooting the same structure I was drawn to before. I thought I was trying a new approach, but I’m looking through the same lens after all. Walking through the city, the things that catch my eye should be different every time — yet when I lay out the photographs that remain, the same things appear again and again.

I decide where the wallet goes, and something unconscious picks somewhere else. I go looking for a new image, and something unconscious picks a structure I’ve already been drawn to. What I decide consciously seems to come second; the unconscious has already decided.

Maybe this unconscious way of seeing is what I should be valuing.