The Little Magic of Ordinary Days
Welcome to Authentic Living Coaching.
I’m Linda Codlin, Transformational Life Coach.
Welcome, my friends.
This week I’m sharing a little about what I’ve been living into and running away from.
September’s theme is Pleasure and Fun, this is a theme that keeps repeating itself in my life as a trigger point, I will share some of my aha moments as I’ve been travelling my life journey, and I’ll share some of the raw things I’m experimenting with in my life as I see them show up.
So let’s drive into this weeks magic of ordinary days.
I’ve been thinking about pleasure lately.
Not the big kind.
Not holidays, celebrations, treats or exciting experiences.
I’m thinking about the tiny moments that make something inside me go ahhh.
The moments that are so ordinary they could easily be missed.
And I realised something rather surprising.
I’ve probably been missing quite a few of them.
A few days ago, I was at the oncology ward with my husband.
We had arrived already stressed. We’d just been rear-ended at a roundabout, so there was the accident to deal with. Wayne was anxious about the procedure he was there for, and then we discovered we’d have to wait a couple of hours for blood results.
He was, as they say, like a cat on a hot tin roof.
I was trying to keep him calm and, if I’m honest, trying to keep him from deciding he wasn’t going to have the procedure at all.
My attention was on him.
My attention was on what was happening.
My attention was on what might happen next.
Eventually, I escaped into my book.
And somewhere in all of that, we walked past a vase of daffodils.
At least three times.
I didn’t see them.
They were sitting in amongst the metal and medical equipment, visible almost as soon as you stepped out of the lift.
And they were beautiful.
I love daffodils. I love their open little faces. They seem to be smiling.
These particular flowers felt especially appropriate for the space because the daffodil is the symbol the Cancer Society uses in its work.
But I didn’t notice them.
Not until we were leaving.
By then, the procedure was over. The waiting was finished. We were heading home. The stress had reduced and there wasn’t quite so much occupying my brain.
And suddenly…
There they were.
Those open little faces.
Smiling at me.
A little ray of sunshine amongst all the metal and medical equipment.
A happy wave goodbye.
And I realised I had walked past them several times without seeing them at all.
Nothing about the flowers had changed.
I had changed.
Or perhaps my attention had.
That got me thinking.
How many little moments of pleasure are already around me that I don’t see because my attention is somewhere else?
I started noticing.
There was sitting in front of the fire, watching the flames flicker and feeling the heat.
The fire asks nothing from me.
I can sit in my rocking chair, watch the flames and feel the warmth. My thoughts can disappear for a while.
There is nothing to achieve.
Nothing to organise.
Nothing to fix.
I can simply sit there.
And I feel comfortable. Safe. Content.
Then there was a meme.
Wayne interrupted me while I was doing something, and my first response was annoyance.
But he wanted to show me something he’d found amusing.
When I saw it, I laughed.
And then I asked him to show it to me again.
What I realised later was that it wasn’t really the meme that touched me.
It was the thoughtfulness behind it.
He’d seen something and thought I would like it.
He wanted to share his amusement with me.
A tiny moment of “I thought of you.”
Then there was the firewood.
Wayne has been cutting firewood into slabs for next winter. I helped organise the lengths as he worked.
At first, I felt that old urge to prove myself.
There was a time when I could have done the heavy lifting and the hard work, and some part of me felt that perhaps I should still be able to.
But I didn’t want to.
And I didn’t want to reinjure my body simply to prove that I could.
So I made a little shift.
It wasn’t a competition.
We were working on the same project.
He was doing his part.
I was doing mine.
We weren’t necessarily doing the same thing, but we were doing something together.
And there was pleasure in that.
I wasn’t there because I had to prove my usefulness.
I was there because I was part of it.
And then I noticed something else.
None of these moments had been planned by me.
I didn’t plan to see the daffodils.
I didn’t light the fire.
I didn’t find the meme.
I didn’t decide that we would cut firewood together.
In fact, Wayne was involved in every one of them.
He was the reason I was at the oncology ward.
He was the one who lit the fire.
He was the one who found the meme.
He was the one determined to prepare firewood for next winter, even if he wasn’t here to use it.
And my part?
My part was to be a part of it.
That sentence surprised me.
Because I have often felt like I am alone, doing my own thing. I’ve tended to see each thing as a separate event, something I need to organise, manage or take care of.
I’ve always felt like I’m the one who organises everything.
And yet, perhaps that isn’t entirely true.
Perhaps my attention has been so focused on what needs doing that I haven’t been seeing how much other people are already doing.
Not necessarily big things.
Not things that arrive wrapped in paper with a ribbon around them.
The subtle things.
Someone cooking a meal because they’ve noticed I don’t have the bandwidth to cook.
Someone looking for something we can do together because they know I’ll enjoy it.
Someone cutting wood for next winter.
Someone sending me a silly meme because they thought I’d like it.
These things don’t announce themselves as gifts.
They simply happen.
And I’ve realised that these are the things I can miss.
I’ve spent the last couple of years learning how to receive.
I’ve worked on being able to accept a compliment or an obvious gift in the spirit in which it was given.
But these little daily kindnesses?
They seem to slide right under my radar.
It’s almost as though the subtlety gets bypassed.
I can be very observant.
I notice all sorts of things.
But I might not notice that someone has quietly thought about me.
And perhaps that matters more than I realised.
Because if I don’t notice the little ways people show their care, I don’t acknowledge them.
I don’t thank them.
And if I don’t register them, how can I experience them?
How can I feel loved by something I haven’t even seen?
That thought stopped me.
Perhaps I haven’t always been surrounded by less love than I thought.
Perhaps I’ve simply been looking for something else.
I’ve been looking for what needs doing.
What might go wrong.
What I need to manage.
Whether someone is interrupting me, trying to control me, or perhaps even trying to manipulate me.
And while I’ve been watching for all of that, I may have been walking straight past the daffodils.
Even the painting-by-number idea Wayne recently suggested showed me this.
He is trying to find things we can do together.
Painting by numbers is outside his comfort zone, but he knows I enjoy that sort of creative thing.
My first response wasn’t particularly gracious.
I felt as though he was trying to take over my hobby and my creative space.
I allowed it, but my attitude wasn’t exactly welcoming.
And yet, looking back, I can see another possibility.
Perhaps he wasn’t trying to take something from me.
Perhaps he was trying to find a way into something I enjoy so we could share it.
I don’t have to pretend my first reaction wasn’t what it was.
But I can become curious about what else might be true.
And that feels like part of this little experiment I’m beginning.
What if I started looking for the things I usually miss?
Not forcing myself to be grateful.
Not making a list of everything wonderful in my life.
Not trying to manufacture happiness.
Just noticing.
The daffodils.
The fire.
The meme.
The firewood.
The little things people do without announcing them.
The things that don’t look like gifts because they aren’t wrapped up as gifts.
And perhaps there is something else here too.
I’ve spent a lot of time believing that receiving comes with a cost.
A hidden string.
An obligation.
Something that will need to be repaid.
But what if that isn’t always true?
What if sometimes someone simply thought of me?
What if sometimes something has been done because I matter to someone?
What if I don’t have to immediately repay it, justify it, minimise it or brace myself for something bad to follow?
What if I could simply notice:
That was kind.
They thought of me.
They wanted me to have this.
They wanted me to be part of this.
And perhaps…
that is love too.
I keep coming back to those daffodils.
They didn’t suddenly appear.
They had been there all along.
I simply wasn’t available to notice them.
And now I’m wondering…
What else is already here?
What little kindnesses have slipped underneath my radar?
What tiny moments of beauty have I walked past because my attention was somewhere else?
What has someone quietly done because they love me that I haven’t even registered as an act of love?
Perhaps pleasure doesn’t always need to be created.
Perhaps sometimes it is already sitting quietly in the middle of an ordinary day.
Perhaps the magic isn’t always in making something happen.
Perhaps some of the magic is simply noticing what is already here.
And I’m beginning to wonder what I might see if I look differently.
So, my experiment is to see what is already here, notice it, appreciate it for what it actually is.
oxo Linda
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