“While everybody is nodding off, I find those moments where I see sunsets and sunrises and all the times in between that are fascinating and so beautiful and it’s almost like [being] free.”
~ Julian Lennon, Science of Mind Magazine, Feb. 2014
It’s funny. When I found this quote, I saw the brackets around the “being” implying that the person who added the word, did so for clarity, and maybe he did, and that was Julian’s intent. The quote is obviously out of context, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful either way.
And either way, the meaning is the same. That unconscious place where most people spend most of their lives is just the fine line between sleep and freedom.
Most people never notice the sunrises and sunset and enjoy the incomparable beauty that is there in that moment, let alone see the beauty and the expression of life in the rest of the day. Most people walk through life asleep, and without a conscious thought of the constant change around them. They see their lives as static and uninteresting, a drudgery they endure, but seldom enjoy.
When was the last time you took a moment in a simple take like washing dishes and noticed the way the water flowed over your hand or the way the bubbles have an iridescent property. Or, took a walk and noticed the sound of rustling leaves or, in colder weather, the steam rising from the drains. Have you ever listened to the music that some trees make or flag pole wires, or, in the city, the music the hi-rise buildings make? I often just sit on my back porch in St. Augustine, close my eyes and listen to the wild sounds of nature. I can imagine myself somewhere else, a jungle maybe, listening to the “gronks” of the herons, mixed with the finches, mockingbirds, laughing gulls, and myriad other birds, mixed with the deafening sound of cicadas, crickets, and other critters of the undergrowth amidst the background music of the wind whistling through the longleaf pines, live oaks and cedars.
It is amazing how much life we miss with our headphones or our music cranked up.
~rev jim starke