Forget-me-nots

A lesson in waking up and smelling the roses...

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the warm welcome back! It’s been wonderful stepping back into writing and onto the balcony as a mother of twins. Whilst motherhood is providing a powerful paradigm shift for me, these awarenesses are by no means limited to mothering. All change- however big or small- allows us to see ourselves and our lives in new ways. So whether you are moving house, starting a new job, or getting old, all of the changes you are experiencing in your life can serve as great teachers. “

“Obstacles do not block the path. They are the path.”- Zen proverb.

Wishing you all a wonderful week, wherever it takes you.

Katie x

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I love my Sunday morning walks. Before the town centre opens at 10 am, there’s a fresh and peaceful energy and a feeling that everyone else is sleeping. Aside from the distant hums of church singers and the occasional rumble of traffic, my recent spring soundscape has included bird song and recurrent raspberries blown with gusto by one of my baby girls. Plus, whichever podcast I’m plugged into that day.

Last Sunday, I was out for my usual morning walk, pushing the buggy on the main path through a local nature reserve, when one solo dog walker crossed my path with a smile and a nod towards the blue-speckled floor:

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they.”

Suddenly transported out of my podcast world and back into the real one, I pulled together a generic nicety:

“Oh yeah, the bluebells! Got to enjoy them while they last.”

“Oh no, they’re not bluebells. They’re forget-me-nots. There are so many if you head that way,” he said, pointing towards the woods.

For over a week, I had been walking right past the bright sea of blue and wrongly assuming that these flowers were bluebells. Simply because they were blue. Once again, I was reminded of how often we are asleep in our own lives.

So, on this Sunday, rather than resuming my podcast and continuing down the main path, the girls and I took a detour into the woods. Up close, it became clear that forget-me-nots are, in fact, very different from bluebells (!) Pushing the buggy off-road and across the muddy track, I could see them not only as a smudge of colour but as entities unto themselves. So, one at a time, I took my girls out of their bassinets and crouched down with them on the blue carpet. As they took in their new surroundings, captivated by the bold and vibrant colours, I, too, found myself seeing for the first time. While they twirled the flowers between their tiny fingers, I began to notice the different shades of blue and also smatterings of purples and pinks too. I could no longer label them as ‘blue flowers’ because they had, at that moment, come alive for me. They were not just a background to blur using portrait mode, but the main event.

The same happened with the birds. Whilst I use bone-conducting headphones, a clever safety device that allows me to simultaneously listen to my surroundings and whatever is playing on my phone, I can no longer fool myself into thinking that this gadget enables me to be present with my environment. It’s simply another tool that divides attention, breaking our presence into little pieces so that we never stay for long in one place. During this pause in the woods, I wasn’t just processing the rustles and chirps and categorising them as ‘nature’. I was present with the sounds as they appeared and disappeared. The different pitches, timbres, and frequencies. And aware of how surprising and emergent nature can be.

Everything is new to my girls, and yet, in these fleeting moments of pure presence, I realise that everything is also new to us. It’s not that it stops being new; we simply stop seeing it as so. These cheeky little flowers have been pining for my attention, and over the past week, I have barely given them a sideways look. With its efficient yet often unfeeling processes, my brain must have quickly categorised the sensory data as ‘blue’ and flower’ and then proceeded to move on to the next shiny thing. Nothing to see here; case closed.

Until this morning, it wasn’t that I had ‘forgotten’ the namesake flower. I didn’t even know they existed. They weren’t even part of my world. Now, I see forget-me-nots everywhere (even in my back garden) purely because, for a short time, I gave them attention and allowed them to come into my conscious experience. This makes me, once again, appreciate the importance of bringing more of a child-like wonder to our lives. When we are open to the newness of things, as opposed to being the one who knows, we are more present with the people and places in our lives as they unfold. Through labels, categories, and binary thinking, we can lose touch with the everyday aliveness that makes up the very nature of life itself. The only constant is change, and everything and everyone is in a constant state of transformation.