A spot of birdwatching

The poem, Leisure’ by W.H Davies is one of my favourites. It begins

“ What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stop and stare?”

It seems that even in 1911, when it was written, there was a sense that our human life was too rushed and busy. I wonder what people then would make of our lives! And yet we seem absolutely powerless to change it.

My sense is that we need to get radical. And we get radical by quietly, but defiantly opposing the onwards rushing, demanding, productivity-obsessed narrative of this beautiful thing we call life.

We don’t get radical by booking a yoga class so that we can decompress enough to get some headspace for more productivity.

We don’t get radical when we relax by scrolling through Instagram.

I’m sorry if I am sounding fired up, because I also know how hard it is, and I fall into traps and habits regularly. But what I know is that we get radical when we start to recognise that the source of more peace of mind is ourselves. Yes, we almost certainly need help to get there, but when we recognise that we actually can, wow. That’s powerful.

In the spirit of this, yesterday afternoon, when I was supposed to be writing a newsletter but had truly nothing of interest to say, when I was feeling tired, a little run down, I sat down and watched birds. We’d bought some new bird feeders and seeds and some fat-balls and hung them up, but the local sparrows and blue tits hadn’t seemed to notice yet.

But I sat anyway. I lit a candle, made a cup of tea and I sat and watched. I noticed the jobs that needed doing, the sweeping that I’ve been promising to do all month. And then I let that go. And watched. I felt the twitchiness for my phone. I resisted. I felt it again. And resisted. And then a blue tit arrived. I watched as it balanced on the fat-ball with matchstick legs. I watched every peck. It flew away and I watched it go. I sat for another twenty minutes and no other bird arrived.

What had I gained? What had I achieved? What did I have to show for it? Nothing. But oh, the joy of being able to say that in this life that can be full of care, I could choose to stop and stare.

Radical.