When my daughter Nell was fourteen she wrote the following piece:
“If I left a fiver on this bench it would be gone by tomorrow. But if I threw five hundred pennies they would still be here in a fortnight. People say they want happiness but they are expecting to find to whole on a park bench.”
I thought it was amazing then, and I think it is amazing now. I recognise the truth of her words – I recognised it eight years ago when she wrote it – but I still live my life chasing the fiver…
When I set up The Garden Room eleven years ago I dreamed of proving a friend wrong – a friend who though it little more than a vanity project, “It sounds lovely, but how many people actually do the massage course and end up creating a viable business?” She felt I had put my family in debt just to massage my own ego… pun intended …
So, today, I want to draw a line in the sand – I want to let go of that sense of trying to prove my friend wrong – because all it does is make my life about “chasing the fiver”… I’m not sure what I thought being “successful” would mean in the context of running my business – but I know that I haven’t properly savoured and valued all the shiny pennies over the years – looking instead for a crumpled bit of blue paper..
Isn’t it amazing when one suddenly sees something? … this remark – and the judgement behind it – has coloured my thoughts, choices and actions for eleven years…
During those eleven years I have lived a magical life – met so many people, learnt so many things, had such a rich and varied working life – and yet always at the back of my head was this nagging doubt – was my practice little more than a self indulgent hobby..?
So to return to another favourite quote,
“Before I was enlightened I was depressed, after I was enlightened I was still depressed – I just didn’t care any more”…
So this is my version:
“Yesterday my business was a self indulgent hobby, a vanity project – today it is a self indulgent hobby, a vanity project – I just don’t care any more” … because… I am having the best time 🙂
