Small Pleasures

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things.

A follow-up from my last post - I’m still thinking of the small things on which our lives are built.

I just returned from 6 weeks of intensive teaching. Glad to be home. Grateful for so many small things in my life. Especially since I’m sick as a dog. Nothing like a period of incapacitation and illness (stomach flu) to make one think about what we all should really value and what the miracle of a life really consists of.

So I put together this video. What are the small pleasures which amplify and inform and “wrap” your own life?

So much of what we think in life is “important” is truly a distraction. If you count them up, the “moments by moments” of which our life consists - it is the small pleasures that truly make up one’s life and make it successful, complete, fulfilling and purposeful.

Forget all the “big” things of life. The job titles, the possessions, the endless vanity and pursuit of what others have told us is “success”. One is successful if one can come to take pleasure constantly in the small things. To be, not to have. To live simply, simply live.

I RESOLVE

I resolve
to wear more purple
and not to pull up my socks
should they fall
to eat more strawberries
in the sun, one after one.

I resolve
to look more closely,
at the smaller things
buttons, spiders, dandelion dust, wedding rings
to sit more on swings.

I resolve
to stay longer in bed awake
and think and dream
about a boat I want but
will never make.

I resolve
to kiss my gal a little longer
to make love stronger
more often pull her in
to always, in all things, in spirit
begin, being …..

I resolve
to play with children,
like one of them
and collect fire trucks
and climb trees
and get my knees green again.

I resolve
to tell my mother I love her
a thousand times, all at once
and tell her she did well
thought all can so very well tell.

I resolve
to think of the good every day
and in suffering
know what I may
not be otherwise
each of us a crooked surprise.

I resolve
to look in that little fishes eye
the next time she’s hooked
to ask for more soup
and look where others haven’t looked.

I resolve
to look up more skirts
to sword fight with willow sticks
to spread my peanut butter just a little more thick
to burn, forget, the length of my wet wick.

I resolve
to lick my dog back
and to take a crack
at what I’ve never dreamed
to believe and pass by
all things that I’ve only seemed.

I resolve
to have my cake and eat it too
but if others need
bread ‘ll have to do
to do what needs be done
even if they don’t see the good.

I resolve
to buy myself more flowers
and to pick more wild ones
- the scraggly beauty of my love’s
luscious hair
to sit by streams
waiting for the gull on the rock
fishing
to be there.

I resolve
to listen to more of life’s honest
on and off, up and down
to lose myself in rhythm
and in that strange way
be found.

I resolve
to suck longer on fresh peaches
to not see the ugliness in leeches
to go wherever my will reaches
and getting there
eat my bread in joy,
drink my wine in peace
for this day will never
come again
just like this new year
will never ask when.