Notice the subtleties and the micro-moments.
Key take away from this blog post is that, life happens in the micro-moments.
If we never stop to pause and slow down, we miss those very micro-moments which are ironically what makes life become the wonderful fairy tale that it is.
Let me tell share with you an experience I had.
As you sit here reading this, I want you just for a moment, press pause.
How often do you stop and just press pause in your every day? In your life in general?
This was something that struck me starkly recently and was really quite a wake-up call.
I was walking in the Cypriot Hills. It had just gone 7.30am and the sun was beginning to become more apparent in the sky.
As I was meandering my way around the pathway through the hills, it occurred to me that within moments, everything would change. Then moments later, everything would change again.
The scenery, the sounds, the sun’s reflection, the sights.
One moment I would be at the top of a hill, staring in to the mountains, the next I would be on a bend and the whole landscape looked vastly different. Then I noted within moments as the sun was rising - how it cast shadows on the hillside, plunging it in to darkness, then moments later, would sun-kiss the mountainside casting everything in gold highlighting the vivid colours hidden in the cragged rockfaces.
What enables us to notice subtleties and micro-moments?
I had walked this path nearly every morning for a week.
Yet somehow, every morning it seemed to appear markedly different and I would spot something that I had missed in previous mornings.
Each day I was shown a new perspective on what I had already seen in each day previously. A new tree, a new viewpoint, a new rock formation and new meander in the road, a new colour in the rock, a lusher group of shrubs.
I realised in these moments, these micro-moments, that the very reason I could notice them was because I was fully participating in each and every step and second that passed on that walk.
My mind was truly present.
No podcasts, no texting, no music, no distractions. Simply the natural ability I was born with to really tune in to my incredible senses that we so often take for granted.
However what I also noticed was that at the very same time my mind that was keeping me present, held the ability to take me away from these very moments and allow me to get swept-up far away in to the future, or back to ruminating over the past.
And at times, I caught myself drifting both forward and backwards as my mind wandered, slipping between the cracks, away from the present state of being - and in to the subconscious residing either with the past or the future until my conscious sharply brought me back to the present.
How often do you press pause?
It seems so blindingly obvious and so incredibly simple to state. But I wonder, how often do you actually stop to look at the moment to moment subtleties of things that are changing all around you? The micro-moments that come together to create life as we know it.
How often do you take the time to pause and observe life as it unfolds before your very eyes?
Do you live at 100 miles an hour?
The nature of our everyday lives is exhausting. If you're not telling people you're 'so busy' or 'barely have time to eat' or 'have been working past midnight every night for months' then society tells us that we're not living life enough and we're not pushing ourselves hard enough. And believe me, I have been on this unstoppable hamster wheel and being truly honest with you, have to work incredibly hard to ensure my subconscious doesn’t drag me back to that unhealthy place.
So, I guess in summary, what stuck me as I was walking through the hills was that; if we continue to live life at 100 miles an hour, rushing from one place to another, with no time to take a momentary pause on our 'hectic' everyday lives, then we are missing the magic in the subtleties of change that are constantly in motion all around us.
When was the last time you stopped to reflect that the season had 'changed'. That the sun had gone behind a cloud. That the birds had stopped tweeting at the end of the day. The blooming of a flower, the changing length of your shadow as the sun moved through the sky.
These might appear to be seemingly small, insignificant changes to observe, but these are the micro-moments where 'life happens' and these are the moments that become the poignant reminder and wake up call for us to take note of the infinite other subtle changes that happen moment to moment, day to day in the rest of our lives.
Our children going from crawling to walking
Our children’s first word,
Our hair turning grey,
Our long-standing friendships,
The moment we realised we’d fallen in love,
The moment we realised we’d grown up,
The moment we realised what our purpose was,
The moment we realised we wanted to follow our passion,
The moments where we belly roll with laughter with our nearest and dearest,
The delicious supper we shared with friends,
The smell of freshly baked bread,
That moment of knowing what is is to be ‘home’
The warm embrace of a pet or loved one,
The bottle of wine shared over a long game of backgammon,
The moments you have your breath taken away.
When you look back what do you want to remember?
If we don't stop and just pause for a moment, we're likely to miss these moments which are the very creation of our existence in life, as we know it.
When you look back at your life in the years to come, what is it that you want to remember?
Of course we all want to remember our big life-changing moments; buying our first house, buying our first car, getting married, having a child, but often it is the smaller, more subtle micro-moments where we perhaps aren’t even aware of the changes that are happening, which can be equally as poignant in terms of creating our life’s tapestry and if we don’t pay attention to them, these very moments that shape us, may also be the very micro-moments that slip through our sights.
So I ask you, for the sake of you and your life, don’t forget to find the moment to simply just press PAUSE. And watch the subtleties of the changing micro-moments as they unfold around you.
I hope you enjoyed this post - if it resonated I’d love to hear from you below. Sharing experiences and thoughts is what connects us as humans. And I’d love to hear yours.
Lots of love,
T xx