Fast food, fast lane, superfast broadband….it seems the goal of every service provider is to make our lives quicker.
They would add ‘and easier’ but I’m not so sure. It’s often seems to me that the more time they free up the more things I add to my To Do list.
The trouble with ‘fast’ is that it so often also means unconscious. You know, that moment when you’ve been hurtling along the motorway to get home and you have literally no idea where on the route you are: you’ve been operating on automatic.
Or you wolf down a delicious dinner while watching a favourite TV show and realise you didn’t taste a single mouthful.
One of the things that goes along with my wish to live my best year is to be mindful: to extract pleasure, awareness, gratitude, for all the little things in my life that work. You’ve undoubtedly seen that poster proclaiming ‘Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realise they were the big things’ (thanks Kurt Vonnegut).
Yesterday afternoon I found myself boiling the kettle and reaching for a teabag without paying any attention to what I was doing. Until I spotted my new glass teapot standing alongside a beautiful tin of Fortnum and Mason tea leaves which my son Paul gave me last year.
So I stopped.
I picked up the tin, enjoying its smart metallic red and green decoration. I opened it and smelt the leaves, each ant-sized – rather than the usual powder they crush into teabags.
Carefully I spooned the leaves into the metal strainer that sits in the centre of the pot then poured on boiling water, enjoying watching the water turn a deep golden brown.
After I had let it seep for five minutes I poured milk into a china cup and then poured in the tea.
Then I sat down to enjoy it.
The whole process took five times as long as making tea with a teabag. But it also yielded five times as much pleasure. It gave me breathing space. It gave my eyes, my nose and my tastebuds an experience.
And it slowed me down long enough to remind myself that this too is life. Made up of thousands of little moments we can choose to make special if we wish.
Have the best year of your life 