The Life That Happens in Between

I’m beginning to think that some of the best parts of our lives are the parts we barely notice.

The first sip of coffee while the house is still quiet.
The way the light moves across the kitchen floor.
A conversation with Mitch that starts out about nothing and somehow lasts twenty minutes.
Something simmering on the stove.
Walking into the garden and noticing something bloomed.
A familiar song coming on at exactly the right moment.

Nothing remarkable.

And yet, maybe everything.

We spend so much of our lives anticipating what comes next.

What needs to get done. Where we need to be. What we’re making for dinner. What we’re working toward. The next weekend, the next trip, the next season of our lives.

Even in a beautiful moment, our minds can already be somewhere else.

I catch myself doing it.

Drinking the coffee while thinking about work. Walking through the garden while making a list in my head. Sitting with someone I love while part of me is already thinking about what I need to do when I get up.

And lately I’ve been wondering:

What am I rushing toward?

Because this is it.

Not someday when everything is finished and the list is finally crossed off.

This ordinary Thursday.

The coffee.
The conversation.
The dinner we’ve made a hundred times.
The walk to the shop.
The sound of someone I love laughing from another room.

This is the life.

I don’t think being present means moving through life at some impossibly slow pace. We have businesses to run, people who need us, appointments to make and laundry that somehow keeps appearing.

Maybe presence is simply noticing while we’re here.

Looking at the person talking to us instead of reaching for our phone.

Sitting at the table for another five minutes.

Actually tasting what we cooked.

Opening the window because the air feels good.

Using the beautiful cup on an ordinary morning.

Letting a good moment be enough without needing to turn it into anything else.

There is so much emphasis on creating a beautiful life.

Maybe we already have one.

Maybe we just keep missing pieces of it because we’re looking ahead.

I want to get better at staying.

Staying in the conversation.
Staying at the table.
Staying in the garden a little longer.
Staying with the ordinary moment before reaching for the next one.

Because one day, I imagine, these will be the things we miss.

Not the things we rushed toward.

The little things we almost rushed past.

So today, I’m paying attention.

To what is already here.

Because perhaps a beautiful life isn’t made only from the big moments we remember.

It’s made from all the small ones we were present enough to notice.

 

-Natalie