The Joy of Simply Being
The other day I was making myself a cup of tea. It had been a slow day; not much had happened, but I was peaceful and my thoughts were still. Some days I put pressure on myself to do this and that; sometimes I question my life and fill it with judgements; some days I worry. But on this day, for some reason, I felt small and innocent.
If you’ve ever looked up at the stars at night or been in a busy city you’ll know what it’s like to feel small. Seeing the vastness of everything around you can give you a perspective on how tiny you are, and this experience can produce both positive and negative effects. On one hand you might feel insignificant, meaningless and alone. On the other you might feel like all the worries of the world have been lifted off your shoulders, knowing you’re just another grain of sand in a very large desert. In one scenario you might feel full from your own company, full of self love and in the other, you might feel something lacking inside, like you need self importance to feel good and accepted. That morning I was feeling very full.
So there I was making a cup of tea. It was a sunny morning and I could hear birds outside and my windchimes as they knocked about in the breeze; it was a beautiful morning if you had the time to notice. Then I looked up and saw the sun shining through the window and instantly felt like a child in the vast playground of the universe. As I made the tea, this simple and beautiful miracle started to appear. Here I was hanging out on earth, spinning 1,600 kilometres an hour through space on the edge of a galaxy, making a cup of tea. It’s hard to describe the experience but the joy that bubbled up as everything seemed to slip away was so full and so free. I found so much contentment in this simple act of making a cup of tea and I couldn’t help but laugh, and laugh.
Some of you might be thinking I was on some kind of drug when I had this experience, and I wasn’t. The truth is that you don’t necessarily need drugs to have this experience, and if theres one thing that I could wish for in this life it’s that everyone could feel the same joy contained within, completely independant of anything else, so free and full of wonder. You and I have felt it before when we were children; that one memory so full of love and contentment that you wish you could have back.
It was this very small experience of making a cup of tea that made me think, if only everyone could experience this just once; the world would be such a better place. To realise we don’t need so much to be happy. If we could all find the immense joy in something as simple as making a cup of tea, and hold on to that, we’d reach a new level of independence and freedom.
I couldn’t hold on to this feeling for very long, but at the end of it I knew. This space does exist. I’ve only had fleeting glimpses but there are others who have journeyed very far into there own beings and felt it all; the endless bliss of simply being alive, the beginning and the end. Perhaps their stories are not true, but perhaps they are. All I know is I’ve felt something akin to it and maybe someday we will reclaim this innocence and realise that to truly live does not involve the outer world at all. That everything and everyone is within. I’m not trying to proclaim anything ‘other-worldly’ here, but I am simply saying that there is a lot of love and joy in yourself, regardless of who you are and what you do or how many friends or loved ones you have. I can see how, slowly, more and more people are starting to realise this and are continuing to journey more and more inside themselves. So if you’re not feeling okay or if you’re seeming out of touch, try letting go for a day or two. Why not try just sitting with yourself and your thoughts? Watch the clouds float over the sky, or the sunset over the horizon and be your own companion; you may find that there are endless treasures to discover.
📝 Read this story later in Journal.
🍎 Wake up every Sunday morning to the week’s most noteworthy stories in Wellness waiting in your inbox. Read the Noteworthy in Wellness newsletter.