Hello :)
I'm enjoying a quiet, lazy afternoon at the cottage today, making stewed pears :)
It's winter here in South Africa, but although our temperatures can reach below zero in the mornings and evenings...
we are often blessed with pleasantly warm days; and sunny, brilliant blue skies.
There is something so peacefully lazy about the afternoons in the countryside...
I don't notice it in the city, but out here..
it's as though all of nature quiets and slows down for the afternoon hours.
Even the singing of the birds seems to quiet for those few hours, before they begin again with renewed energy in the cool of the evening :)
I sometimes wish that my life was one long, lazy afternoon...
But I was reminded that anything that we enjoy too much of, can so easily become common and mundane to us.
We can relish lazy afternoons as much as we do, only because we have experienced rushed and stressful moments that we can compare them to.
I don't know why we are that way as people :)
But I think we can only truly appreciate sunshine, if we've experienced long, dark and gloomy days.
Or health, when we've been unwell.
I think that those hard times, or dark days, can make us more appreciative of the simple things we so often take for granted.
A cool drink of water never tastes better than when you've been really hot and thirsty!
And that's not to say that any of us would welcome hardships into our lives simply to be more grateful!
But since hardships do inevitably come...
I think it can help to remember that "this too shall pass"
And that maybe the ordinary moments will be that much sweeter because the hardships have been endured.
May your week ahead be full of simple joys to be relished...