Hiking at Harriman State Park

It really is enlightening.Last week I woke up and grabbed breakfast with my husband from our local spot. Unlike any time before, I suggested that we take it to-go and told him that we should just sit in the garden in front of our apartment complex for a bit. And it was there, as I started to eat my breakfast sandwich and sit in minutes of comfortable, unspoken words, that I turned to him and started to cry.I was happy.

As I watched the water fountains splash water into the air, I couldn’t help but be happy. I turned to my husband and told him:

“It’s weird; I deeply appreciate the life around me. I am crying because I can feel the wind on my face, I can hear the splashes of water crash back down into the fountain and I notice the leaves dancing with the direction of the wind on the trees. I think the reason why I appreciate this so much is because I can finally appreciate stillness. I am just so happy; this is a taste of what I have been working so hard for and it’s slowly arriving. I love it, I feel so blessed.”

In a world where there are a lot of fast-paced decisions, dinners, and footsteps, it becomes very hard to appreciate the little things sometimes. I told him that if this was me a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to just sit there and enjoy my surroundings. I would have just been thinking about the 101 things I needed to do and 101 things I should have done; I wouldn’t have been appreciating the moment, the present.

As I ate my sandwich I continued to cry because I could taste every bite of my it, I could enjoy the sun peeking through the clouds and warming my cheeks. And all of this was amazingly nice.

It’s such a different feeling and I cry because I appreciate it. I didn’t need my phone to distract me at that moment. I actually didn’t want my phone at all. I secretly wished we were back in the early 1900s, in the countryside, with no technology. Just nature.