how I want to know that sun

"...we are the one terrible part of creation privileged to refuse our flowering. I know in the text of the heart the flower is our death and the first opening of the new life we have yet to imagine...How I want to know that sun, and how I want to flower and how I want to claim my happiness and how I want to walk through life amazed and inarticulate with thanks". David Whyte's words have counseled me for years and somehow the page I open to at random always carries with it both the weight and lightness of truth.

The speed at which so many, including myself, rush through each day – each task, each commute, each exchange – is, in its own way, a refusal. A refusal to take the time to be amazed and inarticulate with thanks – to actually see what exists around us and the potential flowering inside of us. Slowing down to notice. Letting happiness flower by walking through life gratefully and conscientiously. Accepting this happiness.

In “The Pilgrimage” Paul Coelho writes about the “speed exercise” that his guide taught him on his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It is as simple as this: “Walk for twenty minutes at half the speed at which you normally walk. Pay attention to the details, people, and surroundings”. Coehlo’s guide explains to him that “when you are moving toward an objective it is very important to pay attention to the road. It is the road that teaches us the best way to get there, and the road enriches us as we walk its length”.

Flying across the Atlantic has always served as a forced, but welcomed, pause. Moving toward an objective, but with inevitable time to let your mind and body slow down and rise above the usual routine of your life. Small thoughts suddenly seem much more profound and you become more involved in the present journey simply trusting that you are going to arrive at your destination. In a few hours you will reach your objective and so you give yourself permission to let your mind drift away – but to a place that is actually much closer to your inner truths. To reach a state of what Greek philosophers termed eudaimonia, or ‘human flourishing’, which Alain de Botton believes that we better understand through travel. He writes that “if our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels. They express, how ever inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival”. Travel, inherently involving destinations is more about the journey – the quest – and, therefore, seems to bring us more fully into the present moment.

To pay attention to the world around us – to the journey, the moment – I feel, as Coehlo realizes on his pilgrimage, is one of the keys to happiness. To walk through life at half the speed at which you normally walk isn’t easy, but perhaps it can bring the eudaimonia, the sensation of flying over the Atlantic, the conscientiousness of travel into our daily lives. And so a goal: to try and treat every moment, or at least more moments with a faith that I will get to my destination so that I can let my mind lift up to a higher realm of thought and gratitude for the simplicity of each moment of the pleasure of the journey. Acceptance of my joy...How I want to see that sun.