This past Valentine’s Day, I was with my sweetheart in Barcelona. Barcelona is a beautiful city in the northeast corner of Spain. Architecture is one of Barcelona’s tourist attractions and it is fantastic. The people here have a real sense of who they are, where they come from, their family is involved in their everyday life and the history is everywhere you look. The little cafes and tapas bars dot every street and local neighborhood. Smiling faces, healthy people, the fresh vegetable market vendors and the beautiful shoreline are all very inviting. I can’t seem to drink it in enough. What have I been missing in my own community? It is somehow filled here.
I walked the streets of Barcelona for several days and when my free time permits and I love to watch people. When I go into a beautiful cathedral and I see the locals kneeling to pray or to light a candle, I wonder what they are praying for or for whom they light the candle. I take a moment to offer up a prayer of my own and drink in the moment of the quiet peace I am experiencing.
As I walk down one of the wonderful streets with market vendors selling their wine, cheese and fresh fruits, I pause to drink in the wonderful palate of color which lays before me. Somehow the beautiful peach I just purchased tastes so much better in this atmosphere.
As my honey and I walk arm in arm down to the beach for a sunset dinner here on our last day in Spain, I take back with me all the sites, sounds and smells that are Barcelona and this very pleasant memory of very special moment in time, which will live in my memory for a lifetime. When was the last time you created such a memory?
Spring has started sprouting here on the East Coast and as the blubs begin to open up from their winter’s slumber, I feel as though I am awakening also. Our lives are punctuated with moments of beauty, experiences we want to cherish and hold in our souls. Making a memory today, is a simple thing to do if you only open your eyes to what is around you. If you work and live in a huge city full of concrete, there are punctuations of flower pots and small parks tucked away all around you. If you live in the suburbs you have a larger vista to chose from. What happens is we are so busy moving so fast that we bypass the moments of solitude and beauty and choose to hurry on.
STOP and enjoy what is around you. What I know is that, if we do not stop and are not able to enjoy the small free things, we will never be able to accept the larger gifts that are out there when they come our way. My challenge for you today is to really stop and think about that. Let me know what you come up with in your own thought process.
