LET'S CHAT

I'm hoping today finds all of you doing well and facing today with the wonder we had as children. I'm inclined to think one of the reasons so many people suffer from depression is because of attitude. I've always told my children that attitude is everything. It pretty much is. We believe what we tell ourselves. If we are constantly telling ourselves how stupid we are, how we fail at everything, how miserable life is, how we just know tomorrow is going to be worse than today, we ought not be surprised that we're so unhappy, so stressed and depressed.
    Like so many of you, I have a lot of really difficult things going on in my life, but determined a long time ago that I would always focus on the SHINY things in each day. I also told myself that to the best of my ability, I'd try not to let the world become ordinary to me; but would try to view it as I had when a child.
   
Can you remember how it once was with you? Can you remember how carefree and happy you were when you were a child? Remember how you noticed everything, felt everything: the way the sun warmed your skin, the way the stars twinkled in the black sky, the way wind made things move. Remember how exciting a thing life was then? We had nothing to do but experience living. We had time to use all our senses- to notice how smooth a spoon felt when put into our mouths, how soft the petals of a rose, how wonderful Orange Blossoms and freshly cut lawns smelled, how it felt to make a rocking chair rock.
   
Children experience difficult times, but unlike adults, they don't hold tightly to them. They cry, get angry or sad, then move on. That's something we need to learn how to do. We need to recognize the wisdom in letting go, need to keep ever present on our mind -how short life really is, how quickly it passes. If we'd do this I think we may be surprised at how much more content we would be. I think we'd then be able to experience life the way we did when we were kids. Some of us have focused on our problems for so long, been so miserable for so long we don't know how to have fun any more...seldom laugh.
   
This wasn't what I'd intended to write about but am glad I did. I needed to hear these things myself. Perhaps that's why the words flowed so easily this time. With so many painful, stressful things going on in my life I've forgotten to take time for myself, forgotten how good it is for us to have fun; to laugh and enjoy others, to not focus quite so much on what's going wrong, but on all that has gone right.

One of the things that I really enjoy doing and have started taking time for again, is to read. So often I come across a handful of words that linger years after I've read them. The following paragraph is one I've read often, always discovering while reading it, how truly wise it is to let myself truly experience

living.

   "More than half a century has passed, and yet each spring, when I wander into the primrose wood and see the pale yellow blooms, and smell their sweetest of scents,...for a moment I am seven years old again and wandering in the fragrant wood.
                 -Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932)


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