Inspiration and insight come, sometimes, from the strangest places.

Yesterday I was reading an article on trends in the creation of new scents in perfume. The article ended with instructions on how to wear perfume. (New instructions that I had not read before: put perfume on upper arms because that’s the part of your body you move the most, on neck so that people smell the scent when they hug you, and a big quirt down your back so that perfume lingers!)

The author instructed that spraying perfume in the room and then “stepping out into it” is definitely not the way to put perfume on. I smiled about this because it would never have crossed my mind to spray something as expensive as perfume into the room and then to try to “step into it” as a way of wearing the scent.

I suppose the discussion about “stepping out into a spray of perfume” was still resonating somewhere in my consciousness this morning when I got up. I looked outside into the spring-green tree tops around the back side of our house, saw the sunlight dappled in lovely patterns on the wood planks of the deck, and heard the birds sounding out into the breeze.

My next thought?

“I’m going to take every opportunity I have this morning to step out into the day.” Then I wondered, “What do we mean when we say step out into the day?” Is the day an envelope of beauty to step into? A bubble of light and pattern? A contained space of some sort that is filled with temperature and color and sound?

I’m sure when we say “I’m going to step out into the day,” we mean more than when we say, “I’m going to step outside.” Stepping outside is about taking an action, about movement. When we say, “I’m stepping out into the day,” we are saying something with more a jaunt to it, a lilt, a uplift. It’s as if we know that this day we have the opportunity to step out into is a gift, something special, to be savored and enjoyed.

I’m afraid that often there is a lovely “day to step out into,” and I don’t do it. My eyes are too glued to the computer screen or my intention too focused on my commitments for me even to notice what a day there is to step out into. Once the expert who comes every quarter to take care of pest control at our house said to me as he came in off the deck outside my office, “I don’t see how you can stay in here. If I were you, I’d be sitting out on this deck really enjoying this unbelievably beautiful day.”

The sad thing is that on that particular day, while I had glanced outside a few times and did know the day was beautiful, I had not once thought of stopping my work to “step out into it.”

This morning I didn’t do that. I, for once, registered the gift before me. I consciously and joyfully “stepped out into the day.”

Love,

Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights to anyone whose life is in a time of transition, change, grief and loss of any kind. As an internationally recognized and accomplished consultant, and author of more than twenty books - including Tough Transitions and Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - she is committed to work that helps lift the human spirit.