Dearly beloved reader, I want you to slow down, ease up, take some time to look around. A little less of this panicky, frantic rushing about doing “important things” would help. And if you did take the foot off the gas a little perhaps fewer things would go wrong?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those silly folk who think we should go back to carts, peat fires and tepid baths twice a year. Nor am I here to give you a lecture about the futility of the “rat race” - because I don’t think it futile for us to put energy and enthusiasm into enterprise.
I want you to slow down so as to better appreciate the magic of the world: as the great Paul Gallico made clear in “The Man Who Was Magic” – being able to unscramble an egg seems magical but compared to the everyday wonders of nature it is nothing. True magic is the sun reflecting off the frosty fields, the great cream-coloured dinner plate of the moon in the morning sky, the mist clinging to the valley bottom...those ordinary things we speed past everyday without even a moments thought.
Magic is the things that happen without us rushing about, organising, cajoling, shouting and bothering – the child’s first word, the blackbird singing in the dawn, the fruit in the orchard, the ducklings on the pond. Magic is the stuff that makes us smile – not laugh, guffaw or bray but smile – the giggling toddler, the cat chasing his tail, the view as we cross the last crest before home. Magic is ordinary.
But most days we’re too rushed to care. Or even to notice.
So slow down and soak up the magic.
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