In this episode, we explore five simple, but powerful, ways that you can begin to enjoy the "finer things" in life today—and they won't cost you anything. Join your host, Chelsia Van Hierden, as she discusses how the finest things in life are free and available to everyone. Too often, we approach our lives with the idea that we can enjoy things someday when ______. However, life is fleet-footed, as Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius suggests, and putting our enjoyment of life off for some future time often means that it never becomes a reality. Instead, it's better to cultivate a posture of celebrating and savouring life's finest treasures today.

*In the intro, I mistakenly say we are discussing "10 things." It should have been "5 things." My mistake!

Quotes:

"Slowing down can be a powerful catalyst in our lives, but it’s also valuable for its own sake. It’s tempting to slow down so that we can recharge and work even faster in the future. This is not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting that slowing down is its own end—that we slow down for the mere sake of slowing down, that we learn to savour the pause itself, to explore its corners and find riches in its silences."

"To celebrate the small moments is to recognize that the present is inherently valuable and to find joy in the simplicity of existence. It is an act of mindfulness, a conscious decision to immerse ourselves fully in the here and now. By doing so, we become attuned to the subtle joys of life—moments that, though seemingly insignificant, hold within them the potential to add beauty to our lives."

C.S. Lewis: “And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back — if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: ”People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.”

"Life becomes more beautiful when you learn to celebrate it—even, or especially, when reasons to celebrate feel hard to find. Celebration is powerful, because it forces you to acknowledge that there is something beautiful in life at all times. It is a profound act of gratitude, enabling you to transcend your circumstances and see that today is also worth celebrating."

"To savour a dish, a conversation, a relationship, a book, is to implicitly acknowledge the transience of everything we get to enjoy, and to render unto it our attention and our appreciation."

"We often assume that the finer things in life are costly and must be purchased, when in reality the opposite is more often the case. The finest things in life are free and accessible. What you can buy is just window dressing. "

Books:
Madeline Dore, I Didn't Do the Thing Today
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

Website: http://modernrenaissance.ca/

Blog: http://modernrenaissance.ca/blog/

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