Joie de vivre

Last month I read a book titled Living Beautifully Together, by Alexandra Stoddard. She's written a number of books about what I call "gracious living", including The Gift of a Letter, Living a Beautiful Life, Creating a Beautiful Home, and so on.

The book itself was nothing all that spectacular, and I actively disagreed with parts of it: I do think that one must put time into nurturing oneself in order to be a happy and healthy individual able to help everybody else (you've all know those who wear themselves to a frazzle taking care of everyone but themselves, right? Not very comforting people to be around, usually!) but I was a little uncomfortable with the amount of time the book spent on on that aspect. I'm well trained in how to take time for myself, so I didn't need any more help in that area!

However, it was a very useful book in that it cemented in my mind a philosophy that I have held for some time, albeit unconsiously. Living graciously - appreciating ordinary beauty, making that extra little effort to make life pleasant and enjoyable for myself and others, living life fully, taking the time to make a moment beautiful rather than mundane. It's about slowing down just a little and not running around so frantically that we miss all the lovely moments in life. It's about stopping and enjoying a moment without trying to cram anything else into it. It's about doing more than just surviving.

There's so much more I could say, but I fear these thoughts have been disjointed enough without throwing more into the mix. It's one of those things that I feel so deeply that finding the words to really adequately portray what this is to me seems impossible.

A quote from the book that rather sums it up for me: "Be creative with the time you have and do everything with flair and a sense of fantasy. Whatever you decide to do, make it a wonderful experience."