Vita Sackville-West, in a broadcast on the BBC in 1950 identified a whole range of insignificant, essential pleasures that everyone has experienced from time to time but hardly remarks upon. These brief moments were collectively termed through leaves, after the small but intense pleasure of walking through dry leaves and kicking them up as you go.
It was “through leaves” to run a stick along an iron railing or crunch thin ice; to suddenly remember a word or name you thought you’d forgotten; to write with the perfect pen; pulling curtains that run freely on their rods; sliding out a drawer which opened readily and silkily on ball bearings, cutting pages of a book with a sharp paper cutter; drawing a cork with a good corkscrew; drinking when your thirsty; feeling of sand between your toes at the beach; and reading in bed, all show us that we don’t have to go far and wide for our pleasures, since they are often right under our noses.
Others include ; sinking into bouncy seats at the movies; waking up to find it has snowed overnight; shopping in an outdoor market; putting on a freshly ironed shirt or suddenly catching sight of the sea. Make a list of your own, doing so can make everyday life more in tune with what we really enjoy. Modern living is about providing the means to experience things directly, without the distancing intervention of technology or the burden of too many possessions. Where and how we live is fundamental to our well being. For dedicated minimalists, space, light, color texture are not merely basic elements, they are the only elements. Thing however ordinary are banished or hidden. And when objects are brought out to be used they can assume an almost distracting significance in the absence of anything else. The results induce a Zen like sense of peace and calm revealing the beauty of the everyday-the play of natural light, the sheer dynamic of space and the subtleties of form and texture. Minimalism offers valuable insight too, which is recognizing the irrelevance of a good deal of what fills our homes. Almost everyone could do with a little less in his or her lives
<%SHARE%>