Living life with a wide margin

Maybe its just me or maybe it’s the combination of hot weather and light evenings but the past week has been a haze of business; potty training a daughter, decorating a newly refurbished loft room ready for the arrival of an imminent guest and all the while squeezing in work, cooking, washing and life. My dear partner spotted the pattern of my ever increasing business and coerced me to take time out – to gaze at the view of a setting sun over Windermere, to swim in the lake and to splash my giggling protesting daughter as she paddled at the lakes edge.

Reflecting upon this took me back to some passages in Inviting Silence; a book by Gunilla Norris that has all the depth of the aforementioned Winderemere. She suggests that there is a paradox here regarding our busy lives:

Slowly we discover that we are trying to have what we do

verify who we are. It always fails…..

The paradox is that we must stop, feel

and grow silent

in order to receive the gift of ourselves.

Henry Thoreau famously took time just to be with all that surrounded himself in nature. He had an interesting turn of phrase; that he considered it living with a wide margin for life. With this in mind Gunilla Norris suggests that:

We can start by giving ourselves

just a tiny small margin.

Without being any more than simply stopping

We can pause all through the day to feel

Ourselves in time and space.

This allows us to be located.

I like that idea – that we need to consider it vital to build in some space and time into our lives to allow us to live our lives fully and richly. And with that thought I’ll bring this short sharing to a close…..so as to allow time for me to live life with a wide margin.