Hi everyone, it's Ksonga. Just a reminder that you can listen to all of our podcast,
ad free, on the Headspace app.
Hi, my name's Andy, and welcome to Radio Headspace. So this morning I went out for
a run, and given everything that's going on at the moment, I know running is not safe
everywhere, but unfortunately enough to live in a part of the country where we can go
out running. But because of the crisis, I hadn't run at that time in the morning for a very
long time. It was maybe five, six o'clock in the morning, and I was struck by just how
quiet everywhere it was. And it wasn't just the sound of cars that was absent. It was
also the sound of birds. The sound of so many different things that we don't ordinarily
get to hear. It was a smell of the air. I don't think I've ever smelled the air, that
clear, and yeah, I was running on the road with a few cars every now and again. And it reminded
me of a conversation I had with a very dear friend. And she was telling me how one night,
this was a long time ago now. She was quite young, she's probably 20 at the time, and in
the middle of the night she was awoken by the sound of her apartment door being broken
down. And a number of armed police coming into her room with guns ready sort of to go,
and her being dragged from her bed and taken to the police station. It turned out that she
was being arrested for something that she hadn't done and she was later released. But in
that country, they have a policy where you can be held for a number of years without trial.
And she spent the next almost three years in prison. As she was describing the experience
to me of being in this incredibly confined space, they were allowed out of their cells
for one hour a day to walk. But they could never see outside of the prison. Didn't matter
wherever they were, all they could see was grey, the grey of the walls, the grey of
the cement. But on being released, walking out and seeing the colour of the grass, seeing
the colour of the sky, of the trees, just everything around her hearing sounds that she hadn't
heard in many years. And it was incredibly moving to hear someone talking that way. She
was crying, as she said it. I was definitely crying as she was talking about it. And these
are such simple things that we tend not to see in our life. And ordinary we don't see
them because we are so caught up in our own thoughts. And when I was out running this
morning, of course it wasn't to that extreme, but I felt there was a flavour of that. Seeing
these things, noticing these things that ordinarily we either don't have the opportunity to take
in or that we are so consumed with our thinking that we simply don't see. Perhaps taking
a moment, just to appreciate those really small things, the simple things, the natural
things. It may not be that you can go out for a run, maybe you can't even go out for
a walk where you are, it may be opening a window, it may be going to the front door. But
just taking a moment to pause, I was chatting to a friend the other day, it was probably
about a few weeks back actually when things were, there was a lot more uncertainty in the
world than there is kind of even now. And he was saying it just feels too much and I went
outside in that moment and just stood. And actually in that moment, although there was
lots going on in the world, there was lots going on in my life, in the lives of the people
around me, in that moment, just standing next to a tree on the street, actually there was
a beautiful simplicity about it. And I think it's there for us to find. It doesn't mean
that there aren't more serious things going on in our life. It doesn't mean that other
people aren't necessarily suffering, but it does mean that we can step out of it for
long enough to feel a little more present and to truly appreciate the little things in
life. Thanks for listening today, I look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow.
