Make your last thought a pleasant one

Also posted on my blog.

What is the last thing you think about before you embrace sleep?

I usually review my day or make plans for the next one. If there's something nagging my mind, I try to see it objectively, rationally.

This is the time when my mind wanders wantonly. Without structure. Without boundaries.

I float back and forth in the past and present with a part of my brain looking through a keyhole into the future.

Last night, as I was tossing and turning after a rather aggravating day, I decided to focus on one thing: the one positive highlight that made me feel good inside. That introduced joy to my heart. That made me smile.

It was a tiny green hummingbird outside my office window. It flitted above the flower-less bushes just long enough to leave me mesmerized. Even if for a couple of precious seconds.

Wound up in all the commotion of the day, I hadn't even given that short-lived experience a second thought. Until that time in bed.

I recaptured that moment in time. Rewound it and saw it in slow motion. Lived it again.

I felt peace sweep over me.

Content, I drifted off.

This morning I decided I would make it a nightly exercise. When reviewing the day in bed, I'd think of the one thing, as trivial as it might be, that gave me a moment of happiness. A sight, a smell, a taste, a gesture ...

Small things sometimes light up the gloomiest of days. Things we most often fail to notice. Things that register, but not quite.

It is in the simplicity of everyday moments that life's true beauty is revealed.

I'll leave you with a poem I wrote many years ago about the essence of life:

A cuckoo on a mango tree;

A spider’s web; a buzzing bee;

A blooming bud on a thorny stem;

Dewdrops sparkling like little gems;

The sun rising in the eastern sky,

Flocks of birds soaring high;

The full moon spreading its radiant glow,

Stars that shine all night through;

The neighing of a grazing horse;

Walls covered by a carpet of moss;

An ant carrying a grain of rice,

Ever heard the talks of mice?

Butterflies romancing with the flowers;

Buffaloes chewing the cud for hours;

A kitten’s purr; a sparrow’s chirp;

Snails crawling round a herb;

A rabbit twitching its pink nose;

Water in the river that incessantly flows;

Wind blowing the pollen grains;

The smell of the earth when it rains;

A puppy lapping milk from a bowl;

Ever noticed the burrow of a mole?

Life is work and work is life,

Man always walks on the road of strife,

But – pause a moment and look around -

A treasure of beauty you will have found;

And you’ll cherish these moments for a long time to come,

These gifts of nature can never be summed.

The burden of work is overwhelmingly gripping,

But, these are the things that make life worth living!

© Mansi Bhatia.