I was walking through the olive grove and found myself in a beautiful feeling.
As I continued walking I noticed this wasn’t like a usual walk where my mind would be busy planning or evaluating an idea or what I’d eat for lunch or who was on my schedule next, instead I was noticing all the colours around me and the incredible blue sky above.
It was like I was seeing my environment fully for the first time.
Everything the same yet totally new.
I felt happy and at peace.
The old me would have balked at the idea that I could feel at peace and notice new things on the same familiar walk in the countryside.
The old me was always bored with her surroundings convinced she needed the buzz of the city, yet here I was in a feeling of pure contentment surrounded by the beauty and silence of these ancient trees.
This got me thinking about how we humans make up ideas about ourselves that literally limit our capacity for peace and joy in the moment, wherever we are.
As we fall for these ideas we fall for an identity that isn’t even real.
Depending on what we make up about ourselves we then constrict our capacity for enjoyment or success in that area.
Not only that but as we keep falling for the same thoughts and identity, these inform our behaviour so we find we keep doing the same things.
Then we wonder why it’s so hard change.
For example, I had cemented the idea for so long that I thrived on noise, action and the city and because I kept falling for this thinking it made it very difficult to enjoy my Italian life in the present.
I rarely found any beauty in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Plus I kept engaging the same crazy behaviour.
Like I would regularly have to leave home convinced I’d feel better and more inspired somewhere else.
Innocently thinking that what I was looking for was “out there”.
Can you relate?
As you can imagine this identification wasn’t just costly financially but also to my relationship.
My man would be left behind bewildered as I went off in search of the next thing.
Whilst I always enjoyed the adventure I rarely found what I was looking for, at some point the “new” wore off and like an addict who needs even more of his drug to get the next hit, I needed even more “new” to get mine.
I look back on that behaviour with compassion now, seeing that it’s just what we humans do when we keep falling for the same thoughts.
Thoughts that we think are real.
Innocently forgetting that the feeling we’re looking for , the peace, joy, excitement is always within, always available irrespective of our location, our weight or our bank account.
It seems to me now that as the mind quiets down, which it will, it’s designed to, life rushes in and everything around us, even the familiar, appears fresh, beautiful and new, a wonderful life right in front of you.
Recent Comments