There are moments when you just know you are doing the right thing. Maybe it is as simple as you are slicing apples in the kitchen about to bake a pie. The cinnamon and brown sugar are on the counter.
You know you are right where you belong.
Or maybe you are working from home in the quiet, alone at the kitchen table and you can smell the mint in the black pot on the windowsill and you know. You just know that today it is good you stayed home and did what you did. You don't know why but you do know.
We know. We know when we are doing the right thing, when we are in the right place.
I can never explain why or how I know. I just know. It is instinct I suppose . A way of reading our feelings with our minds. We rely on this everyday in so many ways.
It might also be just a feeling a contentment. A resting place.
Contentment is just so underrated.
So often the world around is pushing for bliss, or joy or a bewildered kind of happiness. We see the scenes of of long washed wooden tables covered in white dishes and French linen outside a chateau with people raising glasses and laughing and you have to wonder, who gets that? Who gets that all the time? Some of us never get that. And that's okay too.
I have never actually experienced that. Only in the movies time and time again. But what I have experienced remains rich to me.
My own kitchen might be enough. My own yard. My own front stoop.
The feeling of flour sprinkled on my counter. A bit of field mallow growing so pink in the yard. A friend dropping off a jar of jam. Some leftovers in the fridge.
This too can be a kind of unwarranted bliss. It can make you so happy in it's ordinariness. These small things that make a life. One little treat built upon another. Iris Murdoch said, "One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats."
I have my favourite things. A milky coffee all foamy and warm, sheets hung on the line, a new pillow for the house. Little things, together add up to more. A new skein of yarn, a fresh piece of linen, a brand new sharpie. Lavender picked in the yard and laid by the candle on the table. Small ordinary things. I know them and I seek them. Now I wonder...What are yours?
