“We have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.”
— D.H. Lawrence
I spent the weekend in Gent, Belgium. It’s been the first overseas trip for a long time, and it was something special.
Amongst other things, I taught an Ascension weekend, saw the blood of Christ, and ate a Mexican pizza.
This is what I learnt —
Objects have the power to move you, to create a feeling that transcends the ordinary.
Now, there’s nothing mundane about the ordinary, not at all.
But our judgement of “same old, same old” has the power to kill it, to make it wallpaper – unseen and unexperienced.
In the search for the glamorous, the special, the new and the different, we miss the beauty and the magic of everyday things and people.
You see –
Our active attention defines the world around us.
We’re bored and our lives are lacking in magic because our attention isn’t innocently and freshly present. It sometimes takes something truly sublime like a Mexican pizza with guacamole and jalapeños or a Belgium bbq with matching craft beer to really wake us up, to stop us in our tracks, to make us enter a mode of Wow.
It’s a shame right? Because we spend much of our life in the ordinary; we can’t have new and different and special all the time.
But the ordinary needn’t be just ordinary. It really is up to us whether it’s ho-hum or something beyond.
That’s what I learnt.
I was reminded of the beauty and the serenity of the everyday. Such as simply sitting, watching rain drops create circle upon circle on the surface of a pond, hearing the rain splatter on a canvas awning above my head, feeling the warmth of a cup of coffee in my hands, sharing observations on life with a friend.
I learnt the power of people, aligned with the purpose of being present and filled with the presence of Now, to really shift and inspire and remind all of us out of that ho-hum mode.
To not take now for granted.
To not wish it was different.
To let now be enough, and in that choice to really appreciate Now, elevate it to something special.
To be present and mindful has become such a cliche. Everyone’s heard it. But how often do we actually DO it?
In the experience of awareness — when you truly drop your agenda and meet now empty of expectation — man, anything and everything comes alive.
Life is imbued with a quality that is the direct opposite of mindlessness.
That’s what I learnt. Again.
Objects are only sacred because we make them so. Moments are only special because we make them so. BBQs are only sublime because we’re completely absorbed in the eating of them.
A blessed life or a largely ho-hum trudge … it’s not the moments of our life but the Life in our moments that makes the difference.
A life you’re proud of and excited by?
It all starts right here and right now, with your choice to be fresh and alive and a witness to the way things are around you.
It’s a blessing to realise this, to practice this until you live in super-ordinary mode all the time.
Nothing has to change except for your attention. Easiest thing in the world too. Maybe not simple, but definitely easy.
Your moments are passing by. Why not make the most of as many of these moments as you can?
Go well,
Arjuna