I wake in the early hours of the morning. Unable to fall back to sleep, I creep to the other room to meditate.
The curtains are pulled wide. The sky is decorated with layers of cloud, dusky and white. The wind mewls, causing the ebony trees to arch and bounce.
My first instinct is to capture this experience for an Instastory. But having already committed to a social media-free Sunday, I don’t do this.
I’m forced to be in the moment, to really see and hear and feel what’s right in front of me. I look out and I breathe. My senses are heightened.
Most people are sleeping at this mysterious hour. I’m in the privileged position of being a lone observer, from this vantage point, of nature in all of its mind-blowing glory.
I marvel at the lightness and flexibility of the branches as they sway and back-bend.
The clouds move across the heavens. I make out a seahorse, which transforms into a chimpanzee. I can’t remember when I’ve been quiet and undistracted long enough to look for shapes in the clouds.
Every so often, a single star is revealed. And the pinprick of an aeroplane travels through the night.
If it hadn’t been for social media-free Sunday, I’d have taken a brief impression of this spectacular moment, then immediately pointed my phone at it.
I’d eye it through a screen, then frame or alter it before sharing it online. How it looked onscreen would be more important than the reality, which I’d barely give a second glance.
Nature is bestowing me with miracles. The least I can do is give it all of my attention and appreciation.
And so I sit at that window, a different screen altogether, and connect in a way that only time and pure presence allows.
I didn’t point my phone at this special moment so this is an image I lifted from Google.
betterthansurviving 