Had a similar experience recently, sitting in our dining room (really just a small space connecting the kitchen and arbitrarily-defined living room) that was turned into a little library. Looking towards the front door from a certain angle, with the light from outside just so, was a perfect layering of shadow and wall color and some floral ornamentation. Like a serendipitous gallery arrangement suddenly appeared in my home.
I like that feeling when you kind of pause the reality to contemplate something. Just saying to yourself - "isn't that moment truly beautiful?".
It happens when I'm in front of a nice view like the top of a big mountain.
It also happens sometimes at the main pub of my hometown, during buzzing summer nights, being with some friends, sharing a card game, a good conversation or just a nice drink.
On a similar note, I just finished the book "We Learn Nothing" by Tim Kreider. In it he expresses the following thought:
We each have a handful of those moments, the ones we take out to treasure only rarely, like jewels, when we look up from our lives and realized: “I’m happy.”
It's funny how I've never really thought about those moments and never really considered that they weren't unique to me, but when I read that, I knew exactly what he meant. I have these moments under the same circumstances as you.
the main pub of my hometown, during buzzing summer nights, being with some friends, sharing a card game, a good conversation or just a nice drink.
We have a small terrace, so although we're in a relatively poor part of the city, we can sit out under the sun and listen to the birds on the rooftops. And today the swifts have arrived.
Sitting out there is also a lesson in weaning myself from the connectivity, reading and making messy notes on paper, getting distracted by the street below.
Here in Holland we use no window coverings, though from where I presently sit I can see dozens of other apartments. There’s a cultural norm that you must have something to hide if you draw the curtains; which is only “normal” for bedrooms at night.
Thanks for sharing this little appreciation of your place on Earth. It caused me to pause and consider for a moment how special my own is, too.
(Huh... never noticed before that 'Holland' begins with 'Holla' :-) )
It's kind of a weird thing how "special" is - for me - proportional to the inverse of "amount of thoughts-about", such that incoming sensory data is essentially miraculous until I start thinking about it, each subsequent thought-about removing a brick of the initial miraculousness until there's seemingly nothing left but modeling (aka "knowing") obscuring said miracle....
Something like that. :-)
But, hey... so window-covering sanity in Holland? I do tend to imagine greater sanity in places other than the United States, where stupidity worship competes with money worship to undermine quality of life.
I often find myself pondering the beauty of everyday situations as well. I'm particularly fond of my computer desk, which is nice, since I spend so much time here :p
Same!
Well... mine is probably more technically a table, but it's rather cool: a rather open metal base into which the posts connected to the solid wood top slide to configurable heights. I've a lamp like the one that jumped around in "Toy Story" in the upper right corner. A couple laptops: the work machine, this private Chromebook. A somewhat ancient digital time/date/month/temperature thingie (by "Ken-Tech".. the face plate also says it's "R A D I O C O N T R O L L E D", but I'm not sure I ever knew what that meant...).
We've both our desks in the corner of a living room that has the largest living room window I've ever lived behind, through which I see some front yard plants, then an old rough-hewn fence, then woods... just a teeny little strip of the end of this street in view on the right side of the frame...
If I lean (in the one (office) chair that's ever done right by my lower back..) right to look more left out that window, I can see portions of an old covered bridge allegedly (i.e. per verbiage on it) in 1971. It's surrounded by a somewhat tall chain-linked fence that, of course, intruders have damaged over the years.. yet from this distance the covered bridge itself looks fine, so I suspect the fence damage has to do with people accessing the place in order to drink/smoke....?