Two Ways to Take a Walk

This afternoon as the sun was setting, I took a walk to ponder my lesson plans and get some nature and exercise. It had been raining all day and the sun was just coming out, lighting up the clouds and shooting down golden paths of light between the tree trunks and onto the new spring grass and moss. As I was walking back along the quiet road, a woman walked out of her driveway right ahead of me.

It was at this moment that I turned and saw an incredible arrangement: the hillside was covered in wild rose bushes, elegant stalks arching together in man-high poufs, small delicate green leaves just starting to grow. Rays of golden sunlight catching and back lighting them. And all of them covered in innumerable water droplets, that caught the sun and burned like fiery diamonds. Thousands upon thousands of them. Like the hillside was decorated with impossibly delicate and intricate crystal candelabras, burning with the brightness of miniature suns. And then the breeze would come, cool, refreshing, clean, smelling of recent rain and clean forest, softly caressing my face. Then the vines would shiver, and the brilliant gems would twinkle like stars or fireworks.

It was impossibly lovely. It was more than a heart could bear or contain. Like someone holding a cup under an open fire-hydrant, you feel the waste, your little heart-cup can only hold and experience and enjoy a tiny fraction of the humongous beauty being poured into it, the rest is just overwhelm, too much to be experienced.

Meanwhile, the woman in front of me, headphones in, head down, was power walking to get her heart rate in the optimal zone. Heck, maybe when she was checking her iphone it was plugged into her heart and she was looking at her heart rate. She saw nothing. She felt nothing. I imagine she was thinking about something that had happened to her earlier today, or worrying about something she had to do tomorrow.

I kept going, pondering the unknown sadness of missing such beauty, and stopped at another wild-rose candelabra/firework, discovering one single drop of water that was catching the light, not as a brilliant white, but flickering, even when the other droplets stood still, between orange and red. Larger as well. A different kind of jewel.

Here is something that I recommend: Sacrifice your past and your future into your now.

It requires a conscious decision, and we often go back to the past and future thinking that is our current habit, and then we need to reset it. But it makes life so exceptionally richer. It is almost the difference between living and not living at all. And as long as you do not also sacrifice your common sense, it will not prevent you from adequately planning for the future. But it will prevent you from missing your life as it happens to you.

Whoops. I thought I was finally going to go to bed nice and early.

Well, good night all  ^_^