I took the day off yesterday. I didn’t write. I didn’t blog. I didn’t do any of my usual things. It was nice. It was a good break from my normal life. It made me realize just how much my usual days are also perfect days.
My guy is here and we celebrated his birthday all day. It was an amazing day with the universe blessing us with absolutely perfect weather, everything flowing from one thing to the next. Nothing pressured or rushed. Just life unfolding in a peaceful, loving abiding. It was lovely.
We spent the bulk of the day at Taft Gardens. If you have never been there, I highly recommend. I do so with a small greediness in my heart. One of the things that I love most about this place is the complete lack of people. Other than the hosts and the people working to keep the gardens in perfect repose, there is no one there. Acres of South African and Australian gardens: plants and flowers, trees and bushes all there for your viewing pleasure...your viewing pleasure and really no one else’s. So I tell you about this place trusting that the twelve people who read this blog will coordinate a non mad rush to go.
All kidding aside, I am sharing it because you really do not want to miss this specular grounds and garden. Keeping it a hidden Ojai gem seems both wrong and selfish. But I will say that it was made more perfect for us by the lack of others yesterday. The older I get the more I want and need solitude and less people. Less everything really.
And that is why the day was so perfect yesterday, even though we were among people intermittently yesterday, it was this peaceful and easy time with him that made the day perfect. Weather, events and places supporting our good time. Some days just work out like that, everything feels universally supported with love, light and peace.
I think this is available to us every day, we just tend to miss it with the appointments, deadlines and schedules. Having to show up at appointed places at appointed times. We miss the beauty of the present moment and how each one flows easily into the next.
There is a tendency within my soul to grasp the loveliness of yesterday to my chest and demand another one today. But the most wonderful thing about a perfect day is that it is done. Closed. Not able to be rewritten or duplicated. It is gone and now the present moment allows for a new kind of perfection to evolve in this new day.
This is also a gift of aging, the ability to appreciate each new day, each moment unfolding slowly and easily over time as being exactly the way it is supposed to be. No need to rush, demand or clutch. We can just allow the present moment to fully contain all the stuff and not worry so much about when it ends, how it changes or whether we get another one. The closure of time brings a crystalline sense to all we do. Giving me an appreciation for the perfect days and the not so perfect ones too.
