SENDING MESSAGES TO THE SKY
I send voice messages back and forth with a friend in Los Angeles. There’s 2,053.15 kilometers (1,275.77 miles) between us and I consider her one of my closest friends, someone I share the most intimate parts of my life with. And: we mostly communicate through back and forth via messages we send while on our way to pick up our daughters from school.
We talk about it all: weekend plans, marriage challenges, our health, our friendships, our writing. It’s a truly special experience to hear her voice sharing how she’s doing and what’s been going on while I walk beneath the trees towards the ocean.
In a recent message she said something like:
“I suppose in a way I'm getting half the experience of life.”
She’d said it in response to an inquiry I posed—along the lines of does she surrender to the love or goodness or joy in life? Because I was noticing that I don’t.
GETTING HALF THE EXPERIENCE OF LIFE
I had noticed that when I reach a certain peak level of joy, peace, laughter, it’s like a trip-wire snaps and I pull myself back.
In a moment of peace, maybe struck still by the sight of the clouds in the sky, I hurry myself to keep walking. In a moment of laughter, rolling with my daughter on the floor, I decide it’s time to move onto the next thing on my task list. Or in a moment of joy, deeply appreciating the life I now have, I get myself to remember something completely mundane or menial. Like telling myself, “Oh, but there are still dishes to wash.”
So I’d been reflecting on all of this and sent it in a message to my friend—from Vancouver up to space and back down again to her in Los Angeles.
Where she thoughtfully considered it and sent me her response.
“I supposed in a way I'm getting half the experience of life.”
It landed with me. I saw how well that statement encapsulated my experience, too.
And how I’d simply made getting half the experience of life a habit.
LESSON #1 - THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN BUSYNESS
This is something slowing down is teaching me:
That there is so much more to life than busyness. So much more than getting things done. There is an entire world of wonderfulness that only ever exists in the pause. Cannot be experienced, noticed or seen unless we slow down. Allow space. Settle into the moment.
Another wonderful woman, someone who has been a long-time client of mine, wrote me recently that she was so happy for me for what I’ve been experiencing lately. She’d been reading about it in this newsletter.
I sent her a message back—along the lines of:
“Slowing down is creating something like a spiritual awakening.”
LESSON #2 - GOD IS IN THE DETAILS
This is something else slowing down is teaching me:
That God is in the details.
Have you heard that aphorism? I’d always associated that saying with design—had understood the quote itself to originate in the world of architecture.
Maybe it did.
Or maybe the architect who is quoted saying it had heard it elsewhere. Had experienced his own spiritual awakening in the face of the tiny, miraculous moments of life and had realized that in the search for understanding, meaning, and truth, if we slow down to notice the details that we’ve missed, we’ll find the presence of something divine.
LESSON #3 - LOVE IS IN THE DETAILS
Love is in the details.
That’s something else slowing down is teaching me. The something divine feels inherently like Love.
I’m so grateful.
Are you?
Wherever you are on your path to peace, stillness, slowing down and joy, I wish you well. And that you experience tiny moments made infinite by Grace.
Love Lindsey
{Below: A moment in the rain at a pond in our neighbourhood.}