Tadhg’s Journal: ‘And Nothing Happens…?’

20170110-nothing-happens-journalExcerpt from Tadhg’s Journal: Have you ever had one of those days when expectations ran high? Where your heart beat faster, when there seemed to be ‘electric’ in the air, like an approaching storm, and you felt sure something significant was about to happen? But, nothing happened!

Yesterday (again), for me, was just such a day.

On the surface, as regards any significant event…zero, zip, zilch, nada, nothing!

But, at the end of the day when the noise of life lessened, and the ‘monkey mind’ wasn’t quite so active, deep inside there seemed to stir a quiet voice saying otherwise, an intuition that suggested that significant events had indeed happened, but that I (or you) were not aware of them, or perhaps had misinterpreted them. Maybe, passing them off as trivial?

There is another way of perceiving life. The ancients, the Celts, the Druids of old, and many today know there is more to life than meets the eye, and that we can, sadly, sometimes be caught up in the busyness of modern life that we miss it, as our appreciation of life becomes…superficial, shallow, surface-level, so fast. But, and here’s one of my favourite Welsh phrases, mae mwy – there is more.

That quiet voice of positivity that whispers to us, is the voice of the bat kol (literally, ‘the daughter’s voice’, the voice of the Divine) that we all have access to, and which (or should that be ‘who’) constantly speaks to us. It is the voice of the Friend, but a voice that we seldom heed.

I’m reminded of the following poem by Juan Ramón Jiménez:

I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.

And nothing happens! Nothing… Silence… Waves…

Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,

Significant things, then, are happening to us everyday, sometimes revealing themselves as large and significant, sometimes disguised as ‘small’ events that we might be tempted to overlook. Sometimes they appear to be very mundane (whatever that means), but they do happen. Please don’t overlook them.

Maybe the first birdsong we heard of the day was a ‘call’ just for us to draw aside, rest and relax, and appreciate nature? Perhaps, that baby’s smile ‘tugged’ a deep memory within us that reminded us of how loved we are? Or, was that argument we witnessed on the city bus between a couple, a reminder to you of the fragility of human relationships, and an encouragement to contact a family member or friend that evening?

These are events with cosmic consequences. They are ‘whispering sages’ from whom we can learn, if we but pause, heed the event and seek to be aware of its meaning and significance in our daily lives.

It is written in ancient sacred text: Do not neglect the day of small things.

Every event in our life is significant, because there is no such thing as an insignificant person, and the Divine is constantly communicating in our thoughts, through word and through actions.

You and I are standing in that new life;  and yesterday, significant things actually did happen to us. And, today…….?

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