Insights under a tree

Friday afternoon I spent several hours chilling under this tree, pondering life, writing and just dosing off for a while.  So here are some of the insights that hit me (in no particular order)...

• It feels good to slow down and we need to do it more often.  When your brain is all filled up with the stuff you "have to" do there's little room for the small, quiet voice within to be heard.
• Trees are great places to take naps!
• What we consider "nature" really isn't (see the post on nature). 
• When you don't like something, instead of dismissing it take the time to learn what it's all about.  Many things are very different than they appear on the surface and you may find you change your position once you understand.
• When people rub you the wrong way it's often something you don't like about yourself being reflected through them. 
• When you close your eyes the world comes alive with sounds, scents and sensations you weren't aware of before.
• The older you get the stiffer you get and the more your butt hurts when you try to get up after several hours under a tree :)
• When you fall in love it's often not the person himself (or herself) you've fallen in love with but your projection of your ideal partner onto that person (this from a book I recently read - more later).  
• Kids love to work and will step up to the task with great enthusiasm if you give them a job to do (this from kids gleefully emptying the trash cans in the park while dad sat in the truck).
• Thought and emotion are very closely intertwined, and sometimes despite your best thinking skills, emotion takes over and sends you on a wild ride.
• Emotion and even physical sensation can be transmitted from one person to another, and so can thought.
• Just because science hasn't yet explained something doesn't make it valid (this has been on my mind a lot as I try to find scientific and practical explanations for certain things).
• It's hard for me to find a good angle to see my laptop screen outside and it got me to wondering how many things are hard to see because of our perception or other things that distort our vision.
• Certain people make me happier than others for no tangible reason.  Maybe it isn't always possible to follow the dots and come up with an explanation.  Maybe it's just better to enjoy the feeling.
• There is a time to think and a time to suspend thought and just be.
• When I don't know the answer the best course of action is to assign the problem to the Universe and my sub-conscious mind and do something else for a while.  It will come.
• When I'm feeling floaty like I was the past few days it's useless to try and get any practical work done.  
• Conversely when I'm feeling focused I can get enormous amounts of work done in a fraction of the time it usually takes.
• I need to sit under trees more often :)