Waiting to Be Noticed.

The season has now most certainly turned. The days feel longer, the air is crisp and dry, and for the past few days we have had clear blue skies. It is that time of year when the light feels beautiful. The colours are bright and clean, and I am reminded of the British jigsaw puzzles and calendars I saw in the 70s. As a child growing up in Australia, those images always looked wrong, as if they had been processed badly. It was only when I moved here as an adult that I realised those colours, those more primary greens and blues, were completely accurate. I had grown up with a palette shaped by Australian trees, red dirt and harsh sunlight.

From my house I only have to walk a few hundred yards before I am surrounded by fields and trees, with hardly a house in sight. For the past few evenings I have really enjoyed soaking in those colours and that light. As I walk the dogs, I try to take in everything. Not only the scenery, but the birdsong as well. It is gentler and calmer than the calls of many Australian birds, far less frantic.

We cross paths with the regular dogs and their humans. We stop and chat, the dogs stop and sniff each other. Everyone comments on the weather.  Everyone seems brighter, happier than they did last month. Their shoulders have lifted. They’re standing taller.

Every few days I see someone. I don’t know them,  I don’t even know their name, but they are always on their phone, constantly scrolling.  The dogs they walk lead the way, but the owner never even glances at them, never looks up, not even once.

I can’t help but feel they are missing so much.  There is so much beauty around them waiting to be seen. You don’t even have to look for it.  It’s right there, within and without.

And that is what this time of year does best. It nudges you. The season change doesn’t shout for your attention. It simply is, and it softly asks you to notice. A gentle whisper rather than a wild gesture. The light falls in a certain way, the air sharpens, and the world feels a little more vivid. You look up. You breathe in. You remember where you are, and who you are. Sometimes, even glimpses of why you are.

The dogs certainly know. They pause at every scent, every rustle, every tiny shift in the bushes. They stop and stare across the fields at the slight movement of some small animal I can’t see. They remind me that attention is something you allow, not force. You need to open yourself, your mind. When I follow their example, I sense so much more. All five senses working overtime, even on the quietest evening.

So I keep walking. I keep noticing. And each time I step outside, I try to make space for the simple things that are so easy to miss. The changing light. The softened birdsong. The lifted shoulders of strangers. The easy rhythm of the dogs as they pad along the path.

You can live in the world with your nose in the phone. You’re still outdoors, getting some fresh air. But if you pay attention, if you look up even once, and open yourself to see, you might just feel the world turning.

And often, that is more than enough.

 

What Could Have Been, What Could Be.

The seasons in the UK are much more defined than back in Australia. There isn't a gradual shift, no crossfades like in a movie, just a morning where you look outside and the world has changed. One day you're wearing a coat and scarf while you walk the dogs, the next you're wondering whether to even bother with a jacket. It's a clear shift in light, colour palette and mood. Even the sounds seem different. Birdsong shifts gear, the air seems more alert. And each time it happens I find myself pausing, taking stock, wondering whether these quiet sudden seasonal pivots happened back in Australia and I just missed them, or whether the seasons over there truly blurred.

Maybe as I get older, I pay more attention, am more aware. Maybe the landscape and the climate make it more obvious. Or maybe living this far north means you can’t help but notice when the days start to stretch, when the mornings are brighter a little earlier, and the afternoons are reluctant to let go of their light. The change slowly settles in, but at some point it simply feels as if the new season has crept in while you were looking the other way. That point was during last week.

Perhaps it's the changing seasons, but I've had reason to reflect the past few weeks, thinking back to things that have happened and what might have been. Times when I made decisions - sliding door moments - which led me to where I am now. Opportunities ignored, missed or lost. And for the most part I have few regrets. I was disappointed on a couple of occasions when plans fell apart or simply didn't come to fruition. A few I stretched for but was either not skilled enough or couldn't reach high enough to grasp.

I hear people say that it ‘would have happened if it was meant to be.’ I've always felt this is a mantra we repeat when we need to make sense of a disappointment, a way of trying to rationalise the things that never quite materialised. But when I look back at those disappointments, and realise that for the most part it was for the best, I start to wonder about whether those near misses I took to heart were actually narrow escapes in disguise. The past month has held a sliding door moment. A decision made which I have since realised would probably have led me down a path I wasn’t meant to walk, a path I wouldn’t have wanted to walk, and I imagine the passing of time will confirm that. But I woke this morning feeling strange, imbued with something I haven’t felt for some time. I had to poke it and prod it, explore it before I could recognise it. I found a strange calm in my mind, a sense of hope, as if something had finally settled inside me, a quiet reassurance I couldn’t quite explain but didn’t want to question too deeply. A weight I didn’t realise I was carrying had gently lifted, leaving more than a hint of optimism in its place. Was it the recent near miss? The lighter mornings creeping in? Or was it that the Brits around me, many of them recently weighed down by the winter blues, had begun to thaw? They’re chirping again, like the birds I hear each morning, and it’s hard not to notice. And perhaps, in the end, it is none of those but a combination. A blend of things. A quiet relief at a near miss, the promise of a new season, and the faintest changes stirring both within me and without me. A change in the light, a change in the air, a change in the people around me, and a change in me. The seasons turn whether I am paying attention or not, yet this one arrived with a clarity I could not ignore. As the world around me begins to brighten, with mornings growing lighter and people shaking off their winter heaviness, I feel something in myself brightening too. Not loudly or dramatically, but enough. Enough to notice. Enough to carry. Enough to trust that whatever comes next, I am stepping into it with a softer tread than I had before, with a growing sense that things will work out, and that I will end up where I am supposed to be.