Savor Postcard Moments Without Booking A Trip

Topiary Park, Columbus, Ohio

We have a recurring joke in our marriage.

In the middle of a conversation, while walking our dog in the park, one of us will interrupt the other mid-sentence to point out a striking cloud formation or new buds on a flowering tree.

The interrupter will ask…Wouldn’t that be beautiful if we were on vacation?

It’s an easy mindfulness joke, but it really is interesting to notice what grabs our attention on ordinary days.

Yielding to spontaneous attentional tugs like this really does strengthen mindful awareness.

Catch yourself absorbed by ordinary beauty

When you catch yourself absorbed by what you see or hear around you, dive into the sensory details like an artist or child might.

Not to make sense of the scene but to practice sensing more completely.

Extraordinary doesn’t need to be dramatic

You can practice recognizing the sense of wonder lurking within the mundane.

You don’t need to book your awe months in advance or travel across the country to experience it. It’s alive in your own backyard.

You can observe a similar satisfaction hearing a car drive by, watching the light shift at dusk, or sliding into bed at night.

The essence of mindful awareness

Whether you ever decide to meditate or not, informal attention exercises like this help develop the ability to turn a foggy morning or rainy afternoon into a secret getaway from the blindness of familiarity.

Instead of waiting for something to absorb your attention unexpectedly, what if you decided to come back to your senses a little more often without being prompted?

We don’t need to wait for the weekends, holidays, or vacations to savor the beauty hiding in plain sight around us. When we postpone this impulse, we risk forgetting how to conjure it when the circumstances are finally ideal.