“Slow down, Lyndi,” I constantly tell myself.
Anyone else feeling this?
When life goes fast, creativity suffers. For me, creativity brings balance and contentment to my analytical mind. Who doesn’t like contentment? When we are content, it radiates from within us and positively impacts those we love. Even strangers benefit.
All work and no play makes for a dull life, and absolutely no one benefits from that.
There is beauty in the slow and chaos in the fast.
Beauty is in the small details.
A few months ago, Dennis and I took an extra day off while down south in McKinney, Texas. He was the emcee of a conference, which kept him on his toes. The week before, I got to thinking about his schedule and asked him, “Hey, any chance we can take one extra day after the conference and just explore around town?” He thought about it for a second and then pretty quickly said, “Yes! Let’s!”
The conference ended, and the next day, after sleeping in (which all proper days off entail), we checked out of the hotel and made our way to adorable downtown McKinney. We are a sucker for walkable downtowns with cute shops and excellent restaurants. After a delightfully satisfying breakfast, complete with a robot serving our food (yes, a robot!), we strolled through the square.
Key word here is… stroll.
When we stroll, what happens?
I believe that our senses open up, tension lightens, and we see more clearly. There is beauty in the small details around us. These are details we may be too busy to see or care about in normal life. Details that can simply delight us in the moment, or inspire us for the future.
The bright sun made Dennis need his sunglasses, so as he went back to the car to get them, I walked down a small set of stairs into a French clothing store, where I was drawn to the store’s highlighting of classics, gorgeous designs, and pops of beautiful architectural focal points.
This place oozed charm.
I mean, how stunning is a simple terra cotta pot with trailing greenery and vibrant flowers? Truthfully, how easy is it to incorporate these into our lives? It’s not a matter of expense. Terra cotta pots are inexpensive and can be found at just about every Goodwill, thrift store, or yard sale. Flower cuttings can be revived from the clearance section, or a friend can share a cutting with you.
Charm doesn’t take much.
Focusing on the beauty in small details is grounding when life is full of big responsibilities.
What are the ways that small details inspire you?
Beauty engages relaxation mode.
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I agree. What you think is beautiful may be different from what I think is beautiful.
Take, for instance, IKEA hot dogs.
Because we were in a slow-mo mindset, strolling around that massive IKEA warehouse with nothing but time on our hands, stopping to order an inexpensive hot dog felt beautiful. We were chilling, taking it all in, and we felt utterly relaxed.
The beauty was in knowing that the hot dog itself was not beautiful, per se. That would be weird. But ohhhhh the joy in knowing that we were strolling around the massive warehouse with nothing but time on our hands, and we could do whatever we wanted to all day long.
Enjoying a hot dog.
Because we were not in rush mode.
That, my friends, is another side of beauty. Feeling so relaxed that something as simple as a hot dog can FEEL beautiful.
Tell me I’m not wrong.
Beauty opens up possibilities.
That evening in McKinney, after strolling through the charming downtown and driving past old buildings, admiring the historic homes near the square, and after our hot dog adventures at IKEA, we checked into our hotel.
The location was perfect, chosen for its proximity to walk to restaurant options, and it had a large green space to sit under the stairs and chat. Hand in hand, we walked along the courtyard paths, passing restaurant after restaurant. We were still in relaxation mode, contented by the calm of the day and knowing that we still had the night ahead of us before heading back home to the reality of to-do lists and life’s responsibilities.
And then, something caught the corner of our eyes.
A wave. Two waves. Four waves!
At us!
Our friends!
To our astonishment, two of our good couple friends were in town, dining at the same restaurant we had decided on. They had finished and were waiting for their checks, but we were able to spend some time with them, laughing and laughing and laughing some more before they headed off, and we made our way to our own dinner table.
We were content. Happy.
It felt good. It felt right. It was the cherry on top of our one extra day.
Moral of the story?
Find beauty in the slow.
Stroll.
And yes, that means sometimes you create designs on your dishes with mole sauce, right after bumping into friends.
Eat well, my friends.
Lyndi
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