I am sure I am not alone in saying my mind often tricks me into hunting after the perfect situation that it has fabricated. Like this morning for example....I got out of bed, checked the weather forecast (which in my case this means I look at the fog charts) and I got pretty excited. I quickly had my oatmeal, I vaguely remember there being cherries in it, I ran around the block with Kayla (my always zen Tibetan Spaniel), got home, grabbed my tripod and got into the car. Visions of the perfect foggy autumn forest accompanied me on the way. My mind knew how it wanted reality to look and I was hunting for the exact thing it had come up with. I passed the first forest....no fog, I drove to the second forest....no fog, I drove to the third forest....I'll let you guess here, but it begins with "no"....and ends with "fog"
(This is sort of how I wanted it to look, but with autumn colours and fallen leaves...)
As I had now been driving for over an hour, I felt my excitement had dropped way under zero and was now matching the temperatures outside and my motivation had gone out of the window as well. I had focussed so hard on what I had wanted to see happen, or....I had hunted after what my mind wanted reality to look like ( the perfectly foggy autumn forest captured perfectly and flawlessly on a brilliantly working SD card on my camera and this would be the best picture ever of course). Anything less than that....not good enough....You might have guessed by now that I am a bit of a perfectionist, which I have always stated as my talent, but which is a bit of a curse actually. Especially when you try to force perfectionism onto reality. This is a battle you can't win. The worst thing though is that you miss the beauty and magic that is there and .....that this planet is much more magical than my mind could ever force it into being (which it can't)
(I might have even settled for less fog like in this picture, but with the most glorious autumn colours and very award winning of course)
I decided that I was not going to start my day like this, with a feeling of disappointment. It was after all a result of believing a little bit too hard that my perfectionist mind was right. I thought I'd prove it wrong. I decided to stop my car somewhere where I had not taken pictures before and see what treasure I could find. No expectations of award winning photographs this time, just enjoying the beautiful morning that it was. After all it was sunny for the first time in many days and it WAS beautiful and the air was filled with sounds of thousands of geese flying from one meadow to the meadow across the river. When I let go of my mind's vision of how it would ideally look, everything becomes so much lighter and friendlier. I notice things that before that, I did not see. I always do this when I catch myself on way too much perfectionism or listening to thoughts that simply can not be very true; I start looking at the world with a sense of wonder and then magic is everywhere. I was fortunate this morning, the sun decided to bless my not very perfect perfectionist self and gave me plenty of sun rays when I got out of the car at a very random spot. A sign is in my frame and yes, this would normally bug me to bits, but this was part of my morning and it was magical after all, because I decided to not start my day feeling disappointed. It would have been magical without the sun rays as well, there is so much divinity in the ordinary, such magic in the details of nature.
Look at this world with a sense of wonder and curiosity and be enchanted.
(And this is what I got this morning.....isn't it glorious, even if it is different from what I envisioned???)
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