Content

Winter in Toronto

“The people who seem to be the most content don’t focus on a time years ahead when they hope to have whatever they imagine it takes to be happy — money or time or a wonderful relationship. They live in the present and take their pleasure seriously. And they create their own pleasures.”

~ from the book Simple Pleasures

Bare Necessities

sprouts

“Have nothing in your houses that is not useful or you do not believe to be beautiful.”

~ William Morris

Not By Bread Alone

under an old tree

“When we lack proper time for the simple pleasures of life, for the enjoyment of eating, drinking, playing, creating, visiting friends, and watching children at play, then we have missed the purpose of life. Not by bread alone do we live but on all these human and heart-hungry luxuries.”

~ Ed Hayes

In the Moment

Candles 2

My mind moves much faster than my life does and I’ve been noticing lately how much of an issue this is for me. How incapable I seem to be at just thinking about right now instead of 20 minutes, 20 hours, 20 days or 20 years from now. I focus too much on what’s to come, on what’s next, instead of what I have to embrace and enjoy right now. The more I think of it, the more I realize what kind of debilitating long-term problem this has been. I am a collector of possibilities that I never seem to get around to fulfilling. And waiting for later takes all the joy and excitement out of something that was once shiny and new. It becomes old news before it has even begun.

I’m sure a lot of this has to do with how much I hated (and how trapped I felt by) being in school. Living in the moment was always the last place I wanted to be. I don’t think I was always like this though. As a child I lived in the moment, I’m sure. But once my horrible school experiences started taking over, I think that’s when my collector behaviour began.

This problem has been niggling the back of my mind for a while and it’s not something that I’m just going to get over tomorrow. But I think that if I keep it as a goal in my mind, to not just live in the moment but to appreciate it and find joy in it as well, then things will slowly start to change. It is the Year of Change, after all.

I need to allow myself to have some time to just be, because for too long I’ve been putting off for tomorrow what I could’ve and should’ve been doing today. Reminds you of the name of this blog, doesn’t it. Coincidence? I think not.

Winter

chimneys at dawn

Why do people hate winter? Or any season for that matter? I know that up here in Canada it can get very cold and the realities of moving through snow can prove to be difficult on a Monday morning, but why the hate? Don’t they know that each in turn is part of the whole? There can be no summer harvest without first having winter’s snow melt into the ground to replenish the water table.

I’ve never been a great fan of extremes, be they in winter or summer. I’m much more of a spring/fall girl myself. More wardrobe options that way. But I am getting better at learning to take things as they come. Each season has something enjoyable about it that I think we’d miss if there was suddenly no more of that one time of year. Like, for instance, lighting candles in the early evening when you’ve barely turned your mind to dinner and yet the night already envelops you.

Note to self: remember this feeling and this sentiment come Groundhog Day when the brunt of winter is upon us and there are no more twinkling Christmas lights to make me feel good about it.

Also: remember to stock up on candles.