When I married Mark Carnell in May 2005, I had a teeny tiny tv and no cable, mostly because I was working full-time and going to law school at night, so I didn't have much time to watch tv and money was tight. Mark, on the other hand, was a little further along in his career and had Pat, then 3 1/2 years old. Pat loved Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, and other shows, so I suddenly had access to a nicer tv and cable. More access to content = delight!
Within the first year of our marriage, an episode of SpongeBob aired that was about Pearl Krabs, the daughter of SpongeBob's boss, Mr. Krabs, turning 16. Mr. Krabs tasked SpongeBob with purchasing Pearl the perfect gift for her 16th birthday. Of course hijinks ensued because Mr. Krabs, notoriously stingy with his money, didn't give SpongeBob a budget, and Pearl wanted ALL THE THINGS for her big birthday, which SpongeBob purchased. The biggest gift was booking Bikini Bottom's hottest band, Boys Who Cry, to perform at Pearl's party. The first line of the song they performed was, "It's all about you, girl, on your sixteenth birthday!" It's a catchy tune, so it became a family tradition for us to sing it to each other on our birthdays. In fact, the soundtrack in my head as I write this is, "It's all about you, girl, on your forty-ninth birthday!" Boys Who Cry, SpongeBob, and ongoing family jokes = delights!
Mark and I usually take our birthdays off from work and spend the day together. (His birthday is exactly four weeks before mine, November 21.) This year, for a number of reasons, we weren't able to take off November 21 or December 19, so today feels like a "regular" day, although I've gotten more messages from friends and family than I usually receive on the other days of the year. As a person with a birthday less than a week before Christmas, it's often felt like my birthday gets overshadowed by the holidays. Although my friend Katie's birthday is January 3, and she's told me that by then, everybody is out of the mood to celebrate. Birthday messages from friends and family = delight!
My mindfulness practice reminds me that in every moment there is something to be discovered, and if my present moment awareness is fully functioning, I experience the extraordinary in ordinary moments. Like when I was waking up this morning, and Mark kissed me and said, "Happy Birthday, Boo." Most mornings, he kisses me and wishes me a good morning, so really, this morning wasn't so unlike a "regular" morning. Waking up with my beloved = delight!
These forty-nine years have been comprised of multitudes of small, seemingly ordinary moments. If I get too wrapped up in waiting for a "special" or "right" day to pay attention to what's going on in this moment, I'll miss out on all these delights and the stuff that makes my life mine. I don't want to miss out. My ordinary life is extraordinary, even if the culture I live in doesn't see it that way. My intention for this trip around the sun is that I pay even more attention, more often in all of the ordinary moments of my life. Mindfulness practices that support me in noting delights = delight!
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