Looking For The Glimmers Everyday

This week we are starting the practice of looking for the glimmers everyday ….

On Monday I read an article online which I absolutely loved – it was about what experts on happiness do when they have the blues. They included listening to music, seeing friends, getting out of the house, being kind , joining a club, having a cry , going for a walk in nature, moving your body, meditating and my hands down favorite – paying attention to the small things that spark happiness.

The contributor who wrote about this is Dr Andy Cope , positive psychology expert and one of the authors of – The Art of Being Brilliant.

He talks about triggers and their opposite – glimmers. He says – if triggers are the things that spark stress, anxiety and painful memories then their unnoticed opposite are glimmers – things that pull us back towards calm and joyfulness. He goes on to say –

“Glimmers don’t arrive with fanfares – they aren’t big, cinematic life events. They’re microscopic, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them moments: your first sip of coffee, the smell of fresh sheets, a shaft of sunlight, the kettle’s final click, raindrops racing each other down a window. It’s a dog greeting you like you’ve been missing for a decade, a stranger doing something quietly kind, a bee bumbling with purpose or a misty morning.”

This really struck a cord and it’s something that I began to share with people I saw that day. At the end of the day Bob and I shared some of them and it was such a lovely experience. My lovely sister Jane talked about hearing a cuckoo singing in her garden, mine included the smell of coffee when I opened the tin to make my daily espresso, buying a terrific loaf of ciabatta bread from Bacchus Fine Foods to make our lunchtime sandwich. Glimmer …..

Making a delicious dip with a load of herbs that were about to go over with lemon juice and garlic, which I thought I would need to freeze but then realizing that it was so tasty that within 3 days there would be nothing left ! Glimmer…

Having friends come to see the 2 houses we are working on and bringing their 4 month old daughter – surely one of the most happy and gorgeous and charming babies ever ! I got to carry her and cuddle her and goodness that was a huge glimmer ! She was the personification of a Mabel Lucy Atwell illustration of a happy baby . Mabel Lucy Atwell was an illustrator of children’s books and drew beautiful stylized pictures of babies and children which were very much a part of my childhood.

Not much about Eleuthera yet – right ?

All of this focus on glimmers has been because on Friday last week we had an incident that was pretty depressing – definitely a trigger ! There was a power outage that had either a big surge or drop and it blew my lovely induction cooktop. There had already been a previous one a couple of weeks ago that blew 2 of the cooking spots – but this latest one took out the other 2. And it blew the control panels on our central AC unit along with the wall thermostat controller in the house. Goodness knows how much the replacement panels will be but as they say here – suck it on up !

I was mad with myself that I hadn’t thought when we were doing all the work upgrading the electrics to this house to have a whole house surge protector fitted but it was the first thing I did on Saturday morning – to order two of them online. They will take a while to get here because Kings Ocean is still in a pretty chaotic state with a huge backlog of goods waiting to be sent out after their system went down before Christmas . But many deep breaths and staying calm is the only way forward. That and a few persistent emails to Kings Ocean to keep chasing the delayed shipments.

And acknowledging the glimmers that are there everyday if you keep open to seeing them.

We met Lesley and Cliff while having a lunch date at Tippy’s – Lesley introduced herself as a blog reader and you all know how much I like that ! I gave her a sneak preview of what this week’s blog was about and she gave me a glorious example of a glimmer . She was swimming at Cocodimama beach when a beautiful big southern ray came and swam all around her – what a fabulous treat ……

On the Friday of the dreaded power outage we were entertaining our good friends Martin and Marcie for a lovely dinner of lemon lobster pasta. Thankfully I had cooked the lobster and sauce at lunchtime – but an hour before they were due I went to cook the pasta and then was when I discovered the non functioning cooktop. So what do you do when a disaster like that happens – you call your good friend Dan ! He remembered that I have a Crock pot type thingy and told me I could cook the pasta in the pressure cooker – and guess what – he was absolutely right. So the evening went well and we all enjoyed the pasta and an evening of catching up and being with good friends.

Since then I have bought a hot plate which I can use for anything that I can’t cook either in the microwave or the oven. The new cooktop has been purchased online and will turn up at some point. All is well and the weather is quite cool at the moment so we are not missing the AC…..

And so dear friends – do share your glimmers here please – even hearing about them brings a smile to our faces. And if you live here do think about surge protectors !

And now a few Jewel shaped glimmers …..