100 Days of Wonder – #47
I don’t really need to write anything to go with this photo. The moon on the 14th November 2016 from the hotel window looking out towards Disneyland. For me it holds a calmness that is both joyful and reassuring and it feels like that’s what we all need to hang on to right now
100 Days of Wonder – #45
I think one of the things that is hard to explain is the calmness you can find at Disney World. This picture is from the sunrise over Bay Lake – the lake at the back of the Contemporary Resort. It was taken on 9th January 2023 at just before 7am. Of course Disney World is busy and I am sometimes amazed at how I cope with it. I am not great in big crowds generally. I don’t really like people. But I think Disney World taught me that you can create your now bubble in 2 ways. First you can really just create your own narrative and story and live that – it means it can feel like the only two people in the world are Kath and I doing our own thing even when there are literally thousands of others around us. Disney helps with that hugely because every interaction with a cast member makes you feel like you are the most important person in that moment. The second way is to soak up and find joy, wonder and stillness in those calm moments and places. On our last trip for me that was definitely encapsulated by the walk from our room in the Garden Wing of the Contemporary to the main Tower. At sunrise there was barely anyone else around but even during the day it was calm and quiet. A walk to get coffee became a mindset walk, a headspace stroll and time to breathe deeply and quieten any noisy unhelpful brain activity. Finding the same sort of bubbles is really powerful in our overly busy and noise lives – stay in your story and leave everyone else in theirs and soak up the stillness when you can.
100 Days of Wonder – #34
So after the Halloween interlude, let’s get back to Disney and wonder and joy. It’s my work anniversary today. A year ago I joined my current employer. As you have noticed by now, I don’t need an excuse to reflect, nor do I need an excuse to scroll through Disney photos. I hadn’t picked a photo for today so I scrolled to see if something caught my eye. For some reason this one did. The bit of the Magic Kingdom in the picture doesn’t exist anymore. The photo is from 2006. Looking at it, it seems to me that Piglet is almost certainly about to fall out of the tree. Either that or he has an outrageously strong core. What you don’t know is that the next photo in the series shows Kath standing underneath this very fake tree with her arms ready to catch Piglet. So many times over the last 10 years (probable since forever really) I have just had to let myself fall, sometimes jump, and trust that the universe, often in the form of Kath, would be there to catch me. Sometimes what initially felt like falling was actually gently floating the the ground to bounce back in a different direction, sometimes it wasn’t falling at all but soaring higher than I could ever imagine and sometimes it was falling and landing hard and breaking in millions of tiny metaphorical pieces that needed careful putting back together. But what I have learned from that is to no longer be scared for Piglet or for myself. Falling is all part of our rollercoaster lives and you never know where you might land – maybe it’s somewhere where you’ll want to bounce up and get out quickly or maybe it’s in a ‘great big beautiful tomorrow’. So let’s stop asking ‘but what if I fall’ and instead ask ‘but what if I fly’?
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