There are sev­eral types of nat­ural phe­nom­e­non that inter­est me, nat­ural occurences that to many seem triv­ial. For exam­ple, I find it extremely com­fort­ing to watch those tiny wisps of fire break from the flame. To me, these flashes of light which drift ran­domly and even­tu­ally dis­ap­ate into thin air resem­ble flam­ing fairies.

I can remem­ber going on camp­ing trips with my fam­ily and being in a tran­quil state of mind while watch­ing the fire dance in the breeze. As I reflect to that time, I can still breath in the smell of melted sugar from the marsh­mal­lows that we’d roast on the ends of sticks that we found ear­lier that day. As Don Hen­ley sings, “This was the end of inno­cence”, a place in time where the wor­ries of the world were noth­ing more than fig­ur­ing out how to inter­cept a stale progress report in the mail before your par­ents caught wind of the decline in your edu­ca­tional career.

Some­times at night I love to shut off the tele­vi­sion, or any elec­tronic device that seems to affect my atten­tion span and just lis­ten to the noises out­side; the crick­ets churp­ing dur­ing sum­mer evenings, the low hum of the wind pass­ing through the still­ness of the air or the gen­tle pitter-patter of rain as it falls just out­side the win­dow. As I get older, I real­ize the impor­tance of sim­ple rest or med­i­ta­tion, some­thing I revered in my grand­mother while grow­ing up and yet never full under­stood until now.

Next time you feel swal­lowed by the fast-paced aspects of life in gen­eral, try tak­ing some time out from your day, even if you only have a few moments to spare and just close your eyes and rest your mind. After­all, hap­pi­ness is a state of mind.