The Joy of Small Things Creates Flow in All Things

On my travels last year, I trekked into the mountains of the Lost City in Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Our group were each given a healing bracelet by the Mamo (spiritual leader of the Indigenous community) who told us it would naturally break off when it had done what it needed to do.

At the time I thought it would break off at a significant event, in a breakthrough of some sort, or a grand gesture from life.

I woke up this morning and the bracelet was hanging by a thread on my wrist, just about to break away.

I paused.

I felt at peace.

I’m not sure I had ever tasted the pure sweetness of inner peace so potently.

The comfort of waking up hand in hand with my soul partner, the gentle chirp of the birds outside, the freedom and love I felt in my heart.

I understood fully for the first time that the peace I was seeking was always within, freed by finding the joy in small things and enlivened by embracing the flow of all things.

On reflection, perhaps the biggest jolt to my being was moving from Jamaica to England when I was 8; from a young age I associated emotions with the big leaps, significant shifts and change.

Jamaica was where I knew who I was. My deepest root, my groundation. After leaving it, my association with self shifted; feeling rooted was always there, not here.

I think that mindset stayed with me subconsciously.

As I look back at my experience of life so far, I now see a clear pattern of wanting to be somewhere else, be someone else, follow someone else’s path. Perhaps because at 8, my young, unique path was abruptly stopped when we moved, and I was unable to find my way back. Thus looking for direction around me, instead of within me.

At some point we all go on a journey and explore externally, at the beginning it is easy to look for the answer over there, not here. But what we seek is always within us.

“For there is always light, if we’re only brave enough to be it, if only we’re brave enough to see it” Amanda Gorman

The courage to see it doesn’t appear over there, it happens here. Within. With small committed steps.

The process is gentle.

Like a gentle walk through nature, observing, bringing in what you need, letting go of what you don’t. Breathing more deeply, opening up more space for flow.

I realise it is not in the grand gestures, it is in the subtle daily gifts of life.

As Spring unfolds before us, what space could you open up to observe the gifts which are right in front of us?