Often, activity which has the least gravity in our day to day life can contribute the most to our contentedness.

My ears were cold as I peered up at the dismal lack of canopy in the deciduous woods while I hiked. I observed the brown craggily branches ahead of the robins blue egg sky. Pennsylvania had been gifted with a cool, instead of a cold day, in January.

It’s the next day during my routine and I stare up at the clock, expecting seven hours to pass during the moment of my glance. Emily Dickinson once referred to time as balls of yarn that could be stowed away in a chest. This metaphor of time as a linear passing thing that can stretch out both before and behind us initially horrified me. “Why don’t I paint anymore?” I mused to myself. I had once painted a squid stuck inside of a gum ball machine. I can remember coating my brush in a mash up of random raw paints, followed by an in concise drag across the canvas. I took such a pleasure in spreading paints all of the canvas as I mixed them into a coherent color and shape as I went. I was not particularly good at painting. Any image I had in my mind never quite turned out, though I so loved the process. The beauty of painting was that I did it not so much for the questionable result, but rather the pleasure in the act itself, and its required time and focus.

My coworker interrupts my nostalgia to tell me about her son’s glasses and I decide to attend to this conversation. In these pensive moments during my life, I hope to stand still on that piece of yarn that is time. Life demands me and while it’s not painting, I choose to savor the task.

I remind myself to not wish seven hours way, to set down my phone for longer than I hold it and most importantly to take pleasure in the present and my attention as to cultivate constant gratitude for this thing we call life.

By Hannah Whitman, LPC