Living Happily

The other day I was talking to my youngest son and he was telling me he belongs to an online group of young people who were a child of the 1990s. He told me there was a recent poll asking what was the silliest thing you believed as a child that you now know isn't true. He said "Guess what the top vote by a mile was." I guessed all the obvious things like Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy but he told me no, top of the poll by a large margin was that they would grow up to be happy. I could have cried. What has happened to our young people, I feel so sorry for them. Large student debts, no hope of buying a home and struggling to find a job in the field they studied in and obviously a cynical attitude fueled by social media!
  Everyone has bad times and feel down I told him but if you can not dwell on the bad bits and take pleasure in all the little things around you in life then in the end they merge into one and your overriding memory of the day is happiness. I think everyone rushes about and doesn't notice little things like wild flowers in the hedge, the birds singing or beautiful sunsets.
   W. H. Davies wrote this poem called Leisure in 1911 so even in those days rushing about must have seemed like a problem.

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

   I am lucky as I was constantly being told to look at a beautiful things when I was a child. I remember walking back from the shops with my sister and my Mum looking in hedges at the birds building their nests and standing for ages listening to them singing. I think it is a skill that probably has to be taught and it is even harder to learn it now when people drive everywhere, even for short distances and with all that is going on around us. The other day I walked back from the shops through the local churchyard and stood for about ten minutes looking at the bluebells and wildflowers. I could hear bees buzzing and birds singing, it was beautiful. Only one person walked past me while I was there and he had headphones on and was looking at his phone while he walked, only looking up to glance at me suspiciously as I "loitered" in the churchyard. I'm not knocking technology completely though as I took these photos on my phone while I was there.

  I have looked back at these photos with pleasure and wish I had photos looking in the hedges with my Mum. This weekend, even though it is raining I'm definitely going to take time to "Stop and stare". Otherwise it's easy to write the day off as just a wet miserable day and more important than that I'm going to keep encouraging my family to do so.