“More often than not, life’s most important lessons appear within the framework of the small details and conversations of our lives. Imagine how much more we can receive and how much more we can learn from these little insignificant actions we take for granted.” –Karen Berg in “Simple Light”
Why do we dream of places far away while mowing the lawn and of the important moments we’re expecting later in the day while we’re washing the breakfast dishes?
Quite simply, we’ve written off the present moment as inimportant and have chosen to be absent from it. What, one might ask, can I learn from following the lawn mover in even rows through the fescue? And what secrets can possibly lie within the soapy water?
Within the illusion of time, most of the moments of our lives are spent dealing with small details. Rather than spending both sides of every penny, as folks used to say, we often resign ourselves to simply getting through such tasks as yard work and house work in a zoned-out fashion expecting intellectual and spiritual sustance in larger pursuits.
If we are absent from most of what we do, we’re walking zombies and, perhaps, snobbish ones at that, who presume the clerk at the gas station has nothing to offer us, nor the glimpses of heaven within the soap bubbles of the kitchen sink, nor the bluebird singing in the tulip poplar in the back yard.
