Have you ever seen a spider spinning it’s web? I mean, I know you’ve seen spiders, and you’ve seen webs, but have you actually been present in the moment of its spinning, actually watched a spider in the act?
Sitting on the loo last night, I happened to glance over at our resident toilet-spider (and quite a large and beautiful one she is too) and noticed she was making some weird rhythmical motion with her little bum-pincers. I wonder what that’s about, I thought, and peering closer I noticed an amazing little dance going on. She had two vertical strings of web on which she was sitting. She would sit there on one side, wiggling her pincer things for a little bit, pulling the silken strands out with her back limbs. Then she would move over to the other side and attach it to the vertical strand. Then she would do the same thing where she was and move again opposite, creating a little zig-zig of delicate cobweb, like a tiny zig-zag ladder.
I think it was one of the most simple yet amazing things I have ever seen.
Life is so full of these small moments of beauty. They seem to be coming to my awareness more and more lately. The other day, I was walking into town past the waterfront – it was about 9am on a glorious Friday morning. You know how they say ‘you can’t beat Wellington on a good day’? Well, this was an amazing day, simply stunning, when the whole air is just vibrant with aliveness, like it wouldn’t be surprising if the sea and the air and the ground started breathing. It was one of those days when you feel like life is smiling at you. Not just at you. In you.
The warm morning sunlight was positively glistening off the bluest blanket of crystal sea as I walked past Te Papa, and as I glanced out I noticed something in the water – there were dolphins in the harbour! A whole pod of them, leaping and dancing and diving through the water, the sunlight twinkling off their obsidian backs and smooth, silky fins. They were right up next to Te Papa, and all along the waterfront people on their way to work had stopped to marvel in this moment of simple joy and pure beauty. The sun was warm and soft on my face and brilliant in the sky, the sea was smooth and turquoise green, broken only by the tiny white crests of minature waves and the cavorting play of this family of dolphins, come to visit us for this perfect little instant of time. And yet they were oblivious to us, caught up in their simple celebration of life and utter playful revelry in this gorgeous morning moment.
I thought I might actually cry. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.
I felt as if the universe had not just winked at me, but placed both hands on my face and given me a huge big smooch on the lips.
Later on, as I walked back the same way, the dolphins had gone – replaced by the kayaks and jet-skis and people throwing their half-naked bodies into the ocean. But I didn’t feel sad or regretful, as if these pesky humans had chased away those pure and playful creatures. Rather I saw how we were all playful creatures, emerging into an incredibly stunning day to celebrate the gorgeousness of it and the simple pleasure of being alive when the sun is shining and the sea is warm and there is no other moment than the beautiful one right now. I saw not that we had chased away the dolphins, but rather joined them in their play, their gay abandon, their simple joy. We were all life’s creatures, reveling in the glory of life.
Funnily enough, I ‘just happened’ that day to get the perfect job in a place I had never expected to find it. It was one of those situations in which everything seemed to just slot perfectly into place in some smooth flow that just sweeps you along with it.
I wished there was some way of kissing the universe back.
The more present I become to the moment, the more I am able to disregard those moments past and the ones that may possibly come, and just live for the moment I am in, and the more I see how much incredible, simple beauty is inherent in life. The greatest joys are not the huge successes, the grand acheivements, awards, accolades, kudos. The greatest joys for me are those moments when I feel like life itself is smiling at me through some small piece of its perfection.
It really doesn’t matter what happened in the moments before this one, and it really doesn’t matter what may happen in the ones that follow, if in this moment I am present to a pod of dolphins revelling in a sunny day, or a tiny spider spinning a perfect web, or the way the wind bends the trees outside my window. That is happiness. Meaningful happiness, I think, is not attained through toil and struggle and grand conquest. Happiness is already present in every moment. You just have to learn how to see it.
To see a world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.
~ William Blake
Yes! 