On a warm summer evening last week, I was relaxing in an Adirondack chair on my patio when a hummingbird arrived, no doubt to enjoy the nectar of one of my flowering plants. I sat there, watching its wings in a blur just a few feet away from me, and was – in a word – mesmerized. After a few minutes, it perched on a string of lights I have strung from one end of my patio to the other. Have you ever seen a hummingbird at rest? I had only seen them in flight before this night. Watching it then, sitting ever so elegantly, I could for the first time fully appreciate just how tiny, delicate, and miraculous these little creatures are.
And when the hummingbird finally took flight and departed to see what it could find in the rest of the neighborhood, I realized that I had just enjoyed several minutes of pure mindfulness. While I’d watched and experienced some minutes of this little bird’s life, all other thoughts, cares, or worries had ceased to exist. What a gift!
Perhaps precious little moments of mindfulness are everywhere, all around us, if we can only manage to slow down and let them in. These moments could arrive in the form of a visiting hummingbird, the swaying of a tree’s willows, the laughter of a child, or something else.
And the best part? All you have to do to enjoy them is pay attention.
