The world can, at times, be an undeniably heavy place.  Depending on where you live and when, that weight might feel heavier, and I don’t proclaim that the things I bring up in this post have the power to lift all that may be pushing someone down, but I can speak to my own world; not to get into the weight itself, but rather the counterbalance that I’ve been working very hard to appreciate in my day to day.  Tough day at work?  Always.  But work is not the only thing that happened to me today.  Did the weather put a damper into our plans?  Sure did.  But the cancelling of one set of plans might be opportunity for another set to unfold.  Price of groceries go up again?  Almost doubled on some of the things we love most.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t new things to discover or ways we can adjust.  Maybe that sounds like I’m just trying to find silver linings to everything, and perhaps that is one analogy here.  Regardless of whether you call it a silver lining, looking for harmony, or wearing rose coloured glasses, the point is that I am trying in my life to not just let the weight and the noise hold me down, but to take note that there are things that shouldn’t be ignored.  Quieter things. Lighter things.  Little things here and there that help to make a difference in my day.

Candles

Yep.  I’ve become one of those people.  For the longest time I was perhaps not ‘anti-candle’, but I couldn’t see or understand the appeal to them.  They are expensive and they literally burn away – what is the point of that?  I don’t exactly know what I had always associated candles to mean, but it was something that I just knew I couldn’t relate to. That was until we started getting them as gifts here and there.  At first we didn’t want to light them – “You can’t light that!? Do you know how much money that would have cost?!”  Then, one day, we did light one and have never looked back.  Something about the lighting of a candle and having its soft glow beside me, the slow-dancing of its flame, and the ever so subtle whispers that it makes calms me as I work my way through a work call.  It slows things down somehow as we enjoy our family dinner, and it creates and atmosphere that basically just say ‘take a moment to breath.;  So, yeah…I’ve become one of those people.

Conversation Cards

Santa is always good to me.  Every year for as long as I can remember he has filled my stocking with joy in many forms:  candy, chocolate, toys, puzzles, games, the usual accoutrement one might associate to my life-long dedication to being a kid; and once again this year, he did not let me down.

Conversation cards are simple – it’s a box of cards with questions and topics written on them, intended to spark conversation in a room or group.  The topics can range from “tell me a time when…”  to ” what would you do in a situation where…” or “if you could go anywhere….”  The topics are clean (though I’m sure you could source out an NSFW version if so desired), and each card comes with a sort of affirmation on one side of it.  Since receiving these, they have been a staple at our dinner table, as well as on road trips, and our kids are the ones who insist upon using them.  Not that we didn’t already attempt conversation with our kids, but as anyone with children will tell you: they aren’t exactly engaging when it comes to sharing events from their day.  These cards stoke conversation and discussion in a non-biased and interesting ways; most importantly, they get us talking about things beyond just the headlines.

Walks

This one seems pretty simple and straight. forward, but, unless you’re a dog owner, ask yourself: when was the last time I went for a walk?  I know there are plenty of people who could answer that question with recency, many more who join walking groups, and a whole contingent of individuals who walk to work, school, friends houses, or ‘wherever’ just about every day of their lives.  But I’m wiling to bet there are just as many people, and perhaps even some from those groups I just called out, who don’t just ‘go for a walk’ without a destination in mind.  That’s the type of walk I’m drawn to.

Whether it is on my own, or on those wonderful occasions where Alison and I can go together, walking just to walk and without a destination in mind forces the whole experience to be about the journey.  There are observations one can make when the distractions of time are taken away.  I listen to the world differently.  I say hi to strangers.  I pause where I want to pause, and I don’t care what the weather is doing because it always has something to offer – puddles, birds, icicles, butterflies, every shape of wind carries a different story and I’d often prefer listening and reacting to that, than anything I’m going to hear or see on my phone.

Wordle

Every weekday morning I make my way downstairs, pour myself a coffee and make those first efforts to wake up when I don’t really want to.  Shortly there after I will wake my oldest daughter and, for 20-minutes we cuddle on the couch and tackle to NYT games together.  Wordle, Connections, The Mini, Strands, in that order, every time.  It’s a tradition that gets my brain moving first thing, but more importantly allows me the only 20-minutes I will have in my day where it’s just me and my daughter where nothing else matters and there are no interruptions.  There is no risk of me being called into a meeting, or pulled aside to fix, prepare, create, or tend to anything.  The world is still very quiet, where no one is calling my name – it’s fleeting and it’s precious.

There are countless other little things throughout my day that I appreciate and try to take note of; be it the food we prepare together as a family, the very first sip of my very first coffee of the day, the chickens running in our backyard, the Lego on display above our fireplace, the blanket(s) my mom made for us, I could go on forever.  And that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?  The more we pay attention, the more of the little things we see.