Mindfulness
How to pluck the juicy fruit from your day
Can you see the strawberries in your life?
I broke a budgetary rule on the weekend and purchased something that wasn’t on the list.
A punnet of fresh, ripe strawberries.
A hawker had approached me as I was leaving the hardware store telling me he had strawberries for sale, picked that morning. I hesitated. I hadn’t bought strawberries in three years. I’d gaze with mouth-watering longing at them and then push my trolley with a brisk shove along the aisle.
A luxury fruit.
Not affordable.
This day was different
Instead of rejecting the offer outright I asked, “How much?”
Imagine my delight that his price for a punnet of perfect red pearls was less than half what they charge in the grocery store.
Hubby was muttering “Can we afford it?”
“Today we can,” I replied.
(It’s too late for a photo shoot— we savored them that same night. No accessories such as cream or ice cream. We ate them unadorned — rinsed and ready to rock our taste buds.)
Every mouthful was intoxicating!
And I recalled the smile on the hawker’s face when I agreed to buy.
Sutra of the Strawberry
(Sutra in Sanskrit means ‘thread’; verbal storytelling to capture and share insights and wisdom.)
Buddha tells of a man travelling across a field who encountered a tiger.
He fled, the tiger after him.
Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little, started to gnaw away at the vine.
The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted!
Pluck the juicy fruit
No matter how difficult the day may be, there’s a blessing hiding in there if you care to look.
If I’d let my head rule, I wouldn’t have bought that punnet. I would have felt resentful the rest of the day — segued into victim mode.
Life’s so hard, circumstances don’t allow me…… blah de blah de blah.
But my heart’s intuition gave me permission.
I’m smiling now as I write and recall how that simple act injected more joy into the world.
We can find peace amid turmoil if we lead with our hearts.
Let them show us the Way.
Thank you for reading.
