Positive

Glimmers  - ArilX pointed out a name ( read here ) for 'micro-moments of happiness'.

Glimmers are the opposite to 'triggers' - those things that set us off on some spiral of negativity. Funny how positivity doesn't seem to spiral like that and needs a steady flow of reinforcement to keep it afloat.

I have something to call it now,  but I reckon I've always been receptive to 'glimmers'.  Born that way.   Got lucky in life's lottery.

Really simple things make me happy. Colour, contrast, shapes, movements, warmth, coolness, breezes, rain, silk, fur, smell of hessian, rustling leaves, glimpse of a fox, light reflected off water... a thousand things every day, even in my most exhausted days (and there seems to have been a few of those lately).

Mr B has 3 daughters all plagued by (and being treated for) anxiety issues to greater and lesser degrees.  The concept of 'triggers' was introduced to me early in the journey shared with them.  I have tried to listen and understand, but I understand only at an intellectual level.  It is hard to 'feel' or identify with the depths of despair that their fears drive them to, or to comprehend how the negativity feeds itself. I'm not wired that way.

He might not have understood that he was doing it but my father was good at seeing and pointing out life's glimmers, so what I seem to have been born with got reinforced with plenty of practice.  Even as we were slaving away grubbing out those noxious Nodding Thistles, we could examine and appreciate the beauty and elegance of their flower type. ('Noxious weed' is a regulatory term in NZ - introduced plant species that have a way of taking over if you let them and anything declared 'noxious' becomes the subject of an active control and eradication program.  Noxious status has never been applied to the all consuming effects of the expanding human population....)

Mum was more stoic: clench the jaw and march on without too much stopping to smell the flowers.  I came to suspect (in her late years) that there had been violence in her upbringing.  She never said it directly but mentioned in one of our last conversations a vow her brother made about bringing up his own children, and it made me look at her childhood photos (of which there are precious few) and see, and possibly better understand, a cowered child. She grew flowers to make her life more positive; she loved tagetes, tiny flowered cushion chrysanthemums, and nepeta especially.

Identifying glimmers must be a tool in the arsenal of life resources and one that I have been truly fortunate to have been gifted. 

I can't help wondering, however, the extent to which a fortunate life has made it easy to be that way, or whether being that way has made my life feel blessed.  Either way, even the crap things (and there is crap, plenty of it, but it's good for gardens) are opportunities....

Mind you, I am struggling to see the bright side of insect bite season.... 

This caught my attention at the base of a tree across the road from home.  Is that not a very cool fungus?  It made me want to build a 'fairy door' into the base of a pile of rotting stumps at the back of our garden; something to intrigue the grandchildren, and make them look around.  A look online for inspiration revealed 100's of factory job fairy doors for sale.  No way José.  This one has to be unique, built by the resident fairy out of the materials to hand.  Watch this space as they say.

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