I took this photo a few days ago at the amazing aquatic centre in Gold Coast, Australia, as one of my sons competed at the Commonwealth Games. A 10,000 seat arena and an amazing lifetime experience for my son. Due to ticketing vagaries, I sat on my own in a “nosebleed” seat, quietly absorbing the atmosphere, including the moment when the Australian crowd sang their anthem in unison and from the first note as one of their swimmers was presented a gold medal. #goosebumps.
So, sometimes for my Tuesday “Writing I Love” posts I simply reflect on a line, and at that moment in time it was a phrase from my friend Morgan Da Costa ”
No Ordinary Moments
Now, recently I wrote “No such thing as an original idea” in which I reflected that, although I believe there is indeed no such thing as an original idea, “we are always listening, learning, developing new ideas to develop, extend, evolve ideas.”
With that in mind, several months ago I wrote one of my favourite posts on this site, “Life is Wild and Precious, Be Present“, in which I reference that phrase from Morgan, as well as the beautiful poem “The Summer Day”, which finishes with :
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
I wrote that post around six months ago, reflecting in it: “what is it I plan to do with my one wild and precious life? I have no plan, yet I have an intention to hold every moment as Wild and Precious”.
Where am I six months later? A lot has evolved, yet one thing does remain constant, and that is a focus on being present, on recognising that there are “No Ordinary Moments”.
I’ve also written a lot around tags such as Presence, Ikigai, Open Leadership around themes in that prior blog, such as reducing busyness, being more present, tuning into our Ikigai, along with writing on presence from amazing humans such as Marina Abramovic, Scilla Elworthy, Gandhi, Mandela and more.
For today, then, let me simply focus on the power of “No Ordinary Moments”.
In our lives, in our businesses, in our leadership, let us always recognise that there are no ordinary moments, every moment we can choose to be present and to imbue with that presence to appreciate where we are.
With that, I give you this view taken around 6 am this morning as I walked at random from my host’s home to listen to the bird song and feel and smell the air just after sunrise.
We then walked to a coffee spot and had the best coffee I think I’ve ever tasted.
First time I’ve seen my friend in at least five years and may be a while before we see each other again, so we are making the most of it.
There are no ordinary moments.
