How Big Is Your Picture?

In Tuesday's post I talked about slowing down and taking a break. Very important! But there's another component to slowing down, I think, and I almost talked about it on Tuesday but decided it needed its own post. And it turned out to be kind of a short post, but I still think it's important.

How often do you really look at the world around you? How readily do you notice little changes that have occurred, like the leaves changing color or the neighbors re-planting their window boxes or the city finally fixing that street sign that someone drove into three weeks ago? It's easy to get so wrapped up in our daily minutiae that we forget to participate in the bigger picture, but the bigger picture is so important! And it's beautiful and it's strange and you are really missing out if you're not an active participant. Which is why I think it's such an important part of slowing down and taking a break, because if you're not aware of the bigger picture then you're really just swapping out the kind of lack of awareness that happens when you're in Go Mode for the lack of awareness that occurs when your mind goes idle. And any kind of lack of awareness is to be avoided, as far as I'm concerned.

That sounds way more preachy than I'd like, but it's true. I could sit here and list all the miraculous little things I've experienced this week but that's just my bigger picture, yours might be completely different. Or it might be the same, with a lot of feathers and lucky coins in your footpath and changes in the trees and an amazing parade of humanity at the riverfront, but only you know for sure.

So that's your assignment for today (and every day, really) - engage in the bigger picture, if you're not already. Try to look at your everyday surroundings as if you've never seen them before. Find something beautiful in the mundane. I guarantee you will never regret it.

Tomorrow is Feel-Good Friday! Again! Already! (thank goodness, honestly, I'm pretty happy to see the back end of this week)

Have a beautiful day.
- Sarah