Friday night, around 9:45, I went out onto the terrace to turn on the security lights. But, who needs lights when my cereus was glowing in the dark, beckoning bats and other pollinators of the night?
By 9:30 on Saturday morning, the petals had begun to droop.
Saturday night, oblivious and readying for the dawn of daylight savings time, I turned the motion sensor lights on early and never gave the cereus a first, let alone second, glance. However, at 7:45 AM on Sunday morning, with coffee in hand, I went out on the terrace and couldn’t miss the show my night blooming cereus had staged while I slept.
Three hours later, the latest extravaganza had drawn to a close — but I see tiny buds waiting in the wings.
[There are] many other small joys, perhaps the especially delightful one of smelling a flower or a piece of fruit, of listening to one’s own or others’ voices, of hearkening to the prattle of children. And a tune being hummed or whistled in the distance, and a thousand other tiny things from which one can weave a bright necklace of little pleasures for one’s life.
…
My advice to the person suffering from lack of time and from apathy is this: Seek out each day as many as possible of the small joys, and thriftily save up the larger, more demanding pleasures for holidays and appropriate hours. It is the small joys first of all that are granted us for recreation, for daily relief and disburdenment, not the great ones.
— Hermann Hesse on Little Joys
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Absolutely gorgeous. 😀
¡Gracias! You are an inspiration. 😉
in Malaysia, on a day trip from Singapore, the guide told us that locals come to a rural village or a fishing village for a weekend and ask a farmer or a fisherman (and his wife, of course) if they could stay with their family in their home and eat with them(and pay them , of course, ) . This is called a “Soft Adventure”. I realized that life offers many kinds of Soft Adventures all the time. Part of the pleasure is in the S.A.s,of course, but even more gratification is in looking for them. Daily. Thanks, Shannon…and Hermann too. (See you in June this year)
Soft adventure? I like that! Hope all is well with you! Hasta junio… 😉