Common Miracles : Week 74
“Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.” - Pema Chodron
agate mobile from Novica.com
I had a gift certificate to Novica.com (great site, check it out for beautiful decor/gifts) and after months of deliberation, I decided to get the blue agate mobile you see above. I have a lot of chimes out back, but no mobiles, so I thought it would look cool hanging on the lanai.
And it does.
One added benefit is that when the breeze moves it, it “tinkles”. It doesn’t chime, but the agate slices bump into each other and make a tinkly glass sound. It’s very cool, and although it’s quiet and subtle, when we first hung it I definitely noticed it among the CHIME-CHIME-CHIME of the other chimes.
But a few days ago, I realized I hadn’t *heard* the agate in a while. I double checked- was it even still THERE? Yup, still there. I, mean, I look at the mobile every day- every single morning when I am waiting for my tea to brew (3 minutes and 33 seconds, to be exact) I stand at my kitchen counter, looking out the back windows, and meditate a bit while admiring those blue slices of agate catching and filtering the morning light. I have never stopped appreciating how beautiful it is. I was pretty sure I would notice it if the mobile just went missing one day.
But how come I hadn’t heard it in weeks?
I stopped and listened, and there it was. I realized that it had been ringing all the time, I just stopped *noticing* it. The sound stopped being unique, it stopped being new. It just blended into the rest of all the other chimes and outside noises. And when I started listening specifically for the “tinkling” sound, it stood out. Now I hear the “tinkling” again. Not as profoundly as I did when Tom first hung the mobile, but it’s there again.
It’s sort of the same thing that’s going on with the little sunroom project we have going on inside the house- by shifting around our furniture and making new spaces out of the same house we’ve been in for over six years now, it’s sort of made the house new again. Interesting. We’re suddenly paying attention to spaces and views that have gotten lost in the regular routines of the everyday.
This isn’t about taking things for granted, because I really *don’t* take the agate mobile or the spaces in my home for granted. I notice both everyday, and I feel authentic gratitude for both every day. (It’s not that “I need to summon up some gratitude for this” feeling, either, it’s the gratitude and appreciation that comes all by itself.) Whenever I am staring out at the blue crystal shimmer of that mobile every morning, whenever I nest myself into my cozy corner nook in the couch, I feel profound appreciation for my nest, my home, the things and people in this space. The things that make this house a home.
So, I’ve been thinking about small shifts, about attention, about awareness this week. How many things how I lost track of, forgotten, stopped noticing because they have become part of the fabric of the everyday? Again, this is not about taking anything for granted. It’s more about losing sight of the little details that make life interesting, the details that make life beautiful. How much of life gets lost in the everyday? How much do we forget?
I think one of the reasons that I love container gardening is for this reason- I am constantly shifting plants and pots around, changing things up. The garden never looks the same from week to week, month to month, season to season, and it’s not only from my constant re-organization, but from nature itself.
I do the same thing in my art studio- I CONSTANTLY reorganize it. It’s not only to keep everything efficient and clean, but also because I like going through my supplies, seeing what I have, and becoming inspired and excited about the possibilities all over again.
I think what I am getting at with all this rambling is that I realized this past week that a big part of gratitude is constantly noticing and RE-noticing everything. Staring at things and people and situations with fresh eyes. Even if I’m not NEGLECTING these things, even if I am actively appreciating them, there’s probably something about them I am forgetting, losing track of. Something that will make them beautiful to me all over again, in a new way.
Common Miracles is a project I started in May, 2011 to examine and discover how gratitude works in everyday life. To find out more about Common Miracles please visit the very first post about this project, located here.