I’ve just left a business luncheon and I have a few minutes to spare so I’m sitting in the car park trying to write my first blog for the umpteenth time and…. nothing. Writer’s block on my first blog!
Then I look out the window and I see a beautiful humming bird flitting from flower to flower and I’m reminded how wondrous it is to just be. The humming bird is not thinking about the impression it’s making on the world. It’s just being a humming bird. No performance pressure whatsoever because it’s not a performance.
The grace and beauty it exudes as it hovers over one flower after another is something that can only come from doing what comes naturally, what it was created by God to do. It’s not trying to be graceful and beautiful, it can’t help it! It was created that way! It’s authentic…
I pick up my pen and start to write.
What comes naturally for the humming bird somehow seems more elusive for us. However, making living in the present a regular practice is well worth the effort. Inhabiting the present can be very liberating. It’s where we stop doing and start being. It frees us from the fear of past failures or from the pressure of surpassing the bar set by past successes. It frees us from the worry of what the future may hold. It frees us to be who we were born to be.
Sitting in that car park, before my muse appeared, the truth was that I wasn’t in the present. I was in an imagined future. A future where my first blog was a flop. A future where I could not keep blogging consistently. Thankfully, the humming bird taught me that everything is beautiful in its time; when it’s in the present, being what it is purposed to be at that moment. I was absent from my moment, powerless to impact my world, stuck in another dimension.
What about you, where have you been living? Past? Present? Future? Is there any area in your life where you have been absent? I would love to hear from you.
Joyfully,
Copyright 2017, Matik Nicholls.
Wonderful Mat! I think a lot of times we allow our lives to be governed by the daily tasks, to stop and look around and immerse oneself in the now requires us to tell our brain to do so. I try to remind myself each day. It’s easy in the morning when you wake up, during the evening I find those moments when I’m in my garden, as well as the magic of my girls when I ‘decide’ to soak them in.
So true Risa! Those moments present with our children are really precious. So many times I’m ‘multi-tasking’ and not really being ‘with’ them. Sometimes I have to remind myself that the now with them is more important.
Truly authentic Matik. As I read your words it made me ponder on my own journey. I appreciate your openness and honesty.
Thanks Trevor. Keep walking!