depth perception...

the other night i helped a friend re-string some necklaces that had been shoddily constructed. the wire was tight and kinked due to over-tightening. the crimp beads were jammed up against the clasps. the necklaces didn't lay softly or coil easily. the pieces were stressed out and near their breaking point.

we disassembled the necklaces and discarded the wire skeletons. my friend picked out vintage golden yellow seed beads to accent one necklace and vibrant green czech beads for the other. i watched her small delicate hands as she thoughtfully placed each bead on the new supple wire. she was deliberate and careful.

it takes me under five minutes to straight string a necklace and i'm often multi-tasking as i do so...watch tv and string a piece...have a conversation and string a piece. my friend was absorbed in her task--mindful of placement, texture and color. when complete, her necklaces popped with color and were smooth against her clavicle.

depth...that's what this is about, i guess. mostly, i'm a surface dweller. i know a little bit about a lot of things. and to top it off, i'm a rusher, which means i speed through life trying to accomplish as much as i can in the shortest amount of time possible. so often, i don't dedicate time to digging deeper into a philosophy or a technique or a vision, i just try to master it and move on without thinking too much about it.

in high school i was involved in a writing program. my teachers' critiques were the same song, but a different note throughout, "heidi, you're rushing your reader." that's how i lived my life too. i couldn't wait to get older, be grown-up, move out, do something else. the thing is, i never thought about what that something else was.

i'm forcing myself to think about the difference between spending a day rushing through a to-do list compared to one spent purposefully committed to the task at hand. i spend plenty of my days disengaged. but there are also days when i enjoy every action i take; love the slippery feel of dish soap between my fingers and the dish i'm washing, rub my nose at the sulfur smell after lighting a match to ignite the oven's pilot flame, watch the rise and fall of my husband's chest as he naps on the couch beside me.

to me, those are the things that make up a happy life. days filled with a multitude of meaningful actions is what i strive for. living in the moment, holding on to each second, feeling deeper than the day before.