When did you last feel a moment of pure bliss?
A moment that was entirely, effortlessly yours.
Close your eyes for a second and try to remember one. Not a holiday, not something you planned or captured on your phone. Just a moment, however small, when you were so completely inside what you were doing that everything else quietly fell away.
The bills were still there. The kids, the job, the person waiting on a reply, all of it sat exactly where you left it. But for a while, none of it existed. You were not managing anything, not performing, not producing, not keeping anyone else afloat. You were simply there, and nowhere else.
What did that feel like?
Maybe it was your hands in soil, thinking of nothing but the next handful of earth. Maybe a piece of music pulled you in so far that you got lost in time and space. Maybe you danced badly in your kitchen with no one watching. Maybe a conversation that ran past midnight, because neither of you noticed the clock. Maybe you stood somewhere wild, ocean or forest or mountain, struck quiet by it.
Most of us have felt this. Fewer of us go looking for it anymore. Somewhere along the way, this kind of aliveness got filed under luxury, something earned only once everything else is handled. A reward, not a right.
It deserves a better place than that.
A few moments like this have stayed with me. Kneeling in dry grass in Zimbabwe, close enough to touch a young lion, every thought in my head simply going quiet. Charcoal on my fingers, a face slowly appearing out of nothing but shadow, an entire afternoon gone without my noticing. A small workshop in Bali, hammering silver into shape, the ring of it sounding out again and again until nothing else remained in my mind.
None of those moments made me any money. None of them advanced anything. No one applauded. But each of them gave me a feeling of peace, happiness, and oneness with the world around me.
There is a word for this. Flow. The state where you become so absorbed that time, and your own self-consciousness, quietly fall away.
When was the last time you were in a state of flow? What were you doing?
Tell me if you like. I would love to know. But more than that, go find it again this week, even briefly. Not because it needs to become a hobby, or a plan, or a life change. Simply because a life without any of it is a smaller life than the one you deserve.
With love from the Bavarian Alps,
Kathrin
