Sat here this morning with a cup of coffee, I notice the walls are littered with rainbow spheres as sunshine bounces off, or courses through, a crystal hanging in my window. I had put it up during the summer but nothing happened as the sun was high in the sky and didn’t catch the crystal. But today, a dropped autumnal sun is just low enough to catch it and, oh my goodness, the spectacle it created. I noticed the smile across my face, my eyes widen and my heart skip a little. It was a lovely moment.
Moments like these are hard to notice when feeling low, depressed or weighed down by the heaviness of life. Feeling low, we might not notice the gorgeous rainbows at all; we might notice and yet feel completely nothing, or even angry — how dare something so beautiful intrude on my darkness? Perhaps we notice and then attach so much mystical magic and meaning to it, highlighting our craving for something bigger than us to intervene, that we miss the simplicity and ordinariness of life.
The colourful spheres are provocative, for sure. And when a child sees a rainbow, they are ecstatic. No amount of explaining how light catches water, or how a crystal produces such splendour, will veer them away from the magic of it all.
Perhaps that is important for all of us. To look on with wonder — not easy if life is chucking the hard stuff at you — but trying to catch these moments can be a really helpful way to step back into the extraordinary wonder of existence. So notice if you are unable to do this. What might that be saying? What can you do about it? What do you need?
Life, for sure, is mostly ordinary. But these kinds of unexpected delights are a wonder, and I feel we need to relish them.
The trick is not to grasp.
Because, just like everything else in life, nothing stays — even the low mood.
Whilst I’ve been busy scribbling this, the sun has gone in and the rainbows have dissolved. My walls look chilly and empty.
But how lovely that the magic happened at all.