One of our "peas" strutting his stuff.
On pretty days, I love hanging the laundry out to dry as I look out over the pastures and drink in the beauty of this place I call home. It truly is one of the deeply gratifying pleasures in my life.
One morning a couple of months ago, I stood at the clothesline, noticing the pastures just turning green with spring’s promise. Taking a deep breath, I felt the velvety quality of the faint breeze. Chickens clucked, guinea fowl hunted insects in the garden and the peacocks strutted and displayed.
Just standing there, drinking in the moment, I felt filled up. Content. And I was reminded of a conversation I had several years ago, that helped me shift my perspective on “having” and “enough” (aka abundance).
Shortly after I moved into our remote homestead in the Ozark wilderness, the county agent responded to my request for a consult. While he walked with me around our property, I pelted him with questions about pasture, orchard and woodlot management. We stood on the neglected, rutted driveway, and I asked about how to best manage driveways and lanes on steep hilly slopes to minimize erosion.
As I recall, I said, “Not that I’m playing ‘keep up with the Jones’, but I don’t want to bring down the property values in this area just because we haven’t maintained our driveway and lane.”
He stood quietly a moment, turning as he surveyed not just the driveway, but also the yard, house and pond. Then he looked back at me, smiled and said, “Ma’am, round these parts, you ARE the Jones.”
My first thought was, “Oh my gosh, all those years I spent striving to succeed in corporate America, and all I had to do to ‘make it’ was move out to the woods.”
The county agent’s remark to me that day was like a stone tossed in a pond, and the ripples still come back to me all these years later.
The paradox is this: Striving to “make it”- to “get there” – doesn’t get us “there” because the “there” we seek is in the now.
Each time I stop and allow the beauty of the moment in, I reconnect with the fullness of life. When I am in that present-moment awareness, I more than remember the truth of abundance – I feel the truth of infinite possibilities singing in my cells. I am that truth – at least while I am able to remain in that state of consciousness.
Isn’t it funny how something as mundane as hanging fresh laundry to dry can be such a powerful anchor to a desired state of being? But then, beauty does it for me. The beauty of nature, the beauty of love, the beauty of the human spirit and life.
What reconnects you with your chosen state of being? How do you plug yourself back in to the current of life, the juice of life that fills, sustains and renews you?
When we’re living from this space of “enough-ness,” we have arrived fully in the moment. And the present moment is where journey and destination coincide. To tie back to the initial posting in this blog, “Are We There Yet?” – it is in present moment that we know we are truly “there,” AND we are completely comfortable with not being there yet.
How cool is that?
If having more “now” is one of your desires, contact me to learn how this can be one of the goals of coaching with me. Together, we’ll explore essential coaching approaches for transforming your relationship with “now!”
In celebration of the adventure – which as we know is in the ever-unfolding “now!”
Lyn
