Today’s question reminds me of a quote from one of Emily Dickinson’s letters, “Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.”

What has helped me is to establish habits and practices, rituals if you will, that keep me grounded in the present moment. Noting the phases of the moon, hunting the wildflowers each season, growing things from seed, learning to identify (give attention to) the birds that frequent my backyard.

When I go about my daily routine, when I walk the same daily path again and again, I try and approach it with the mindset that within what seems like the very familiar, there is something new that can be discovered. Each moment is wholly unique in some way, each sunset or snowfall or summer thunderstorm, is something that will never appear or happen in quite the same way ever again. That adds a sense of novelty and possibility to the everyday, to the mundane.

As someone who is okay spending a lot of time alone and having a few rather than many connections, less social gathering left me feeling calmer and less anxious, more myself.

Not being able to dash to the store every time I think of something I need has made me better at making do with what I have, stretching ingredients to last longer, and making sure I use up or freeze/preserve things rather than letting them waste away in the refrigerator. Thereby, it revealed to me how much I had been wasting.

Walking the same few paths again and again close to my home rather than traveling for hikes and excursions revealed how much there is to notice right at my fingertips. I like to hunt for wildflowers, especially the spring ephemerals, and I found so many growing in a little patch of woods near my house – rue and wood anemones, bloodroot, cutleaf toothwort, putty root orchid. These are, of course, common forest flowers, but while I always notice them and even seek them out on hikes, I realized that I’d overlooked them on the everyday paths closest to my home.

Today’s question made me think of a quote from Thoreau:

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

Over the past 2-3 years, I have “let alone” a number of things material and otherwise and my life has been enriched in a number of ways. However, one thing that hangs on is time-wasting distraction. I no longer need time-wasting distraction, specifically mindless internet searching and social media. I have gone days and even weeks without it and I am so much calmer and more at peace with myself and the world. But it’s so easy to get pulled back into the loop. All it takes is one day of using tiredness or not feeling well as an excuse and invitation and it starts the loop. I need to work on better strategies, I guess, for not getting pulled into the loop.

They key for me is acceptance. Rather than trying to bury negative emotions, I am learning to just let myself experience them as much as possible without judgement, to give myself the space and understanding that I hope to give others. I wouldn’t tell someone else in their moment of despair to just “look on the bright side” or “think positive” so why would I do that to myself? At least so far, I find that when I greet my emotions with acceptance I am able to move through them with more grace.

Accepting life as it is means also accepting what rises within myself as it is. I don’t quite know how to put it into words but I’ve found that the paradox is that acceptance is the gateway to letting go.

I am grateful that I woke up this morning with a peaceful mind. I am grateful for finding contentment in simplicity and delight in simple things – noticing the phase of the moon or finding a colorful polypore on a decaying branch. I am grateful for life-affirming books, coffee that tastes good, for my pup, and birdsong.

Edit: I came back to add my gratitude for my family and a home that is a refuge and a haven. These are things for which I am continually grateful but they bear mentioning as their constancy could make them easy to take for granted.