I loved reading this, Mary Chris! The flowers on the sidewalk especially! There's a quote by Helen Macdonald (who wrote "H is for Hawk" and "Vesper Flights") where she talks about parochialism as "the attendance to small things." I think often about the tiny gratitude and attendance to small things that comes when the sun peaks out from behind clouds after a particularly long stretch of cloudy, rainy days. Watching the chickadees playing on the pile of woodchips in the backyard. The first flowers of the season I could buy at the local general store (granted, for $25 / bunch, but still! flowers!)
I love how you define equanimity for us and balance it with noticing and reframing. And the links that followed!
Thanks, Sara! I love the phrasing "the attendance to small things." Those first moments of sunshine after some gray days are always small moments of gratitude for me. I feel like spring is so full of these moments-- like those you mention with birds waking up and flowers popping up everywhere.
I loved reading this, Mary Chris! The flowers on the sidewalk especially! There's a quote by Helen Macdonald (who wrote "H is for Hawk" and "Vesper Flights") where she talks about parochialism as "the attendance to small things." I think often about the tiny gratitude and attendance to small things that comes when the sun peaks out from behind clouds after a particularly long stretch of cloudy, rainy days. Watching the chickadees playing on the pile of woodchips in the backyard. The first flowers of the season I could buy at the local general store (granted, for $25 / bunch, but still! flowers!)
I love how you define equanimity for us and balance it with noticing and reframing. And the links that followed!
Thanks, Sara! I love the phrasing "the attendance to small things." Those first moments of sunshine after some gray days are always small moments of gratitude for me. I feel like spring is so full of these moments-- like those you mention with birds waking up and flowers popping up everywhere.