We see them. We hear them. We don’t always pay attention to them but they’re there. Those little moments of awe and wonder just waiting to be savoured before they’re gone. A whole string of them every single day, like a beautiful bead necklace, if we’d only take the time to notice. And when we do take heed, how we long to hang on to them, to store them away in that secret treasure box of memory so we can pull them out on a bad day and think “See. There is a point after all.”

But how to capture them, truly? How do you keep hold of that sudden drift of honeyed air as you pass jasmine on a summer evening, the hug your friend gave you or the eerie mist of bluebells through the trees? What about the heavy silence of pristine snow and the melting sweetness of a square of chocolate on your tongue, moonlight dancing on a calm sea, good coffee or the touch of warm sunshine on your skin after the winter cold? How about the languorous buzz of the bees in flowers and the twilight chorus as the dusk paints the sky in subtle pink and lavender.

Allow yourself to notice. Allow yourself to stop and really notice. Breathe it in, let it immerse you, settle inside you. It’s only a moment, but this moment, every moment, is all that we have.

Here’s a moment from my memory treasure box. I was on Corfu, walking back from the beach when I saw a bumble bee visiting a flower in a patch of scrub by the path. Except it wasn’t a bee, it was the tiniest hummingbird imagineable and I watched it for a good five minutes before it flew away.