You are standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing an apple. Water runs over its skin. You turn it in your hand, set it on the cutting board, and reach for a knife. Your thoughts are already elsewhere: an appointment, a conversation, something you meant to finish yesterday.
Then you cut through the centre and notice the seeds.
You have seen apple seeds hundreds of times. But for a moment, you consider what one of them contains: the possibility of a tree, given the conditions and time it needs to grow. You look again at the apple in your hand. This, too, grew from a living tree. Something you were about to eat without much thought has become interesting.
The apple has not changed. You have paused long enough to see something you already knew.
I think this happens with our own existence. We become so accustomed to being alive that we seldom stop to consider it. Life is the setting for everything else. We attend to what needs doing, what is troubling us, what we hope will happen next. The fact that we are here at all becomes almost invisible beneath the business of being here.
Familiarity can give us the impression that we have finished discovering something. We know this room. We know this morning routine. We know the woman whose face looks back from the mirror. Yet there is so much within that familiarity that we have barely considered.
Think of the history that has reached this ordinary morning. Before you could be here, there were generations of people whose lives made yours possible. Most of their names are probably unknown to you. They lived in places you may never visit, met people, had children, and continued a history that eventually included you. From your own small beginning, a living body developed. Now you are here, with a lifetime of experiences that belong to you.
And you can experience being here. You can taste the apple. A flavour can bring back a memory. You can remember someone who once sat across the table from you and feel affection, sadness, or both. You can consider your own existence and find it astonishing.
That capacity moves me. We are alive within a world we can encounter, care about, and respond to. Through us, love can become something another person feels. An idea can take form in a painting, a garden, or a conversation that helps someone understand herself. There are possibilities within being alive that familiarity can hide as easily as it hides the seed inside the apple.
Of course, the morning may be difficult. You may be worried about someone, disappointed by something you worked hard for, or tired of carrying a situation that has gone on too long. Those experiences belong in this reflection, too. Wonder can sit beside them. There can be a moment of pleasure in the light coming through the window while the worry remains. There can be affection for your life alongside a wish that parts of it were different. Some days, even that small opening may feel far away. We can leave room for those days without making wonder another thing we are supposed to accomplish.
What interests me is what might happen when that opening does come. Recognizing the extraordinary within our existence may awaken a desire to know our lives more closely. What have I grown so used to that I barely notice it? What still draws my curiosity? What would I like to give more room to in the life I am living?
These questions can reach into quite practical places. We might make time for an interest we keep postponing, or tell someone something loving we have assumed they already know. We might begin to notice how much a particular friendship means to us, then give it more attention. Wonder can become care for what is here and participation in what could grow.
This is where The Damselfly Path begins for me: with interest in the life that has become ours. Through reflection, stories, and shared exploration, it invites women into a deeper relationship with their own particular lives and with qualities such as love, compassion, and peace. As we learn how to give these qualities expression, we can enrich our experience of living and make a meaningful difference in the lives we touch.
We can begin in the middle of an ordinary morning, with a little more interest in the woman standing at the sink and the life that is still unfolding through her.
Joanne 💗
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