the most beautiful thing: small world, big joy

 

She said, “Maybe you should make your world very small.” It rang a bell in my heart as I sat listening to her on the phone and to the waves and the laughter and the wares-sellers’ calls from the beach. I thought of all the mil things that run through my head all day, just running circles of shoulds and shouldn’ts and maybes and what-ifs and should-haves (oh, the endless should haves). I said, to her, to myself, to my daughter laughing somewhere with her father I was sweetly sure, to my life, “Yes.” Make is small enough to succeed well, to be joyful again.

Today, I’ve made two resolutions I thrill to make. The first, lying in bed with my family, I proposed quite happily: no more complaining. 2014 could be the year we just stop complaining – about anything. “Deal,” he said. Second, toasted over hangover-busting breakfast beer and teary eyes, was to enjoy our days. Enjoy our life. Enjoy. We resolve. I resolve. I resolve to enjoy every day of 2014. I won’t spend much time here on defining the minutia of it, but every day I will effort (if needed) to enjoy myself – “bad days” assumed, tough times expected, immediately enlightened Buddhahood not part of the criteria for enjoying.

Beauty makes our lives smaller and our hearts bigger. Stepping into a world that I enjoy for the sake of enjoyment, for the sake of the love that arises from joy (and vice versa, markedly), for the sake of modeling a resounding “Yes” vs. myriad “No’s” for my darling toddling-soon-enough-to-be-running-her-own-life daughter, for the sake of nothing and everything to gain.

Thing is, all the joy in the world is right here, completely available. It just is. While I don’t resolve to stop planning or hoping or reflecting in my lean towards present moment(ish) bliss(ish) living, my resolution to enjoy my life and stop complaining brings me so much more into this right here, this small loveliness I can scoop right up into my face and smell, sip from heartily, share without a one whole in the bucket dear Liza. This smallness that is dear and sweet. This small life that is huge, for certain. The world in a grain of sand. The palette of masters in the petal of a flower. The hearts of multitudes of beings in the buzzing hover of the honey bee. It’s so so big, this smallness.

Right now, this minute, I am enjoying the breezy seat I have on my couch as my little and big family members nap, beach sounds call from a few yards away, the sort-of-ours cat with almost no name grooms herself at my side, and a new year bursting with opportunities to enjoy life opens up right at my feet. This simple enjoying is the most beautiful thing.

Joyous new year to you. May every day of yours be filled with something so clearly enjoyable that you are brought deeply present by it, as I know you are already. May each of us summon the courage to deeply enjoy our lives and my that courage, that enjoyment, the love that grows from it, soften our world’s pointy edges, bring peace to our breathing, offer endless other options to the very long list of reasons we suffer. Every last one of us, enjoying at last. That’s my New Year’s wish for the world.

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You may enjoy more mini photography over at thechive.

~ by HeatherArtLife on January 1, 2014.