Stopping and Smelling the Roses

I've changed a lot over the course of the last 6 months or so. One of the biggest things that I started out trying to do a lot more was just to enjoy every moment for what it had to offer. I remember when I discovered that breathing felt amazing, and sometimes I just wanted to sit and feel my lungs fill with air, and how amazing that felt, how amazing it was to have a body that could do this amazing thing, and how wonderful it made me feel.

It is a kind of mindset change that seems encapsulated by the phrase "stopping and smelling the roses." When spring came, and I would start walking outside, I would sometimes come across a smell, and would stop, close my eyes, and just enjoy that wonderful smell. One of my favorite smells is a smell I remember vividly from going to the mountains in Colorado when I was probably just four years old.

One day I caught a smell, and stopped to smell it, and realized it was a rose. As I stood there, standing at my neighbors fence, I began to realize that that phrase is not just metaphorical. It is literal. There are beautiful moments to be had every day. There are a variety of wonderful smells, textures, tastes, feelings, all waiting to be experienced, to put aside the other thoughts, and just focus, for one brief moment, on how it feels to be alive in that very moment.

And sometimes that moment will be literal roses, and it is worth it to stop and smell the roses.