NOTE:  If you read this blog, you need to read the next one posted on Sept. 16, 2018.  Here’s the link for it:  https://wordpress.com/post/ingridgudenas.com/954

I made the most stunning discovery on my morning run.  An olive tree loaded with ripe black olives.  I have never before tasted an olive right off the tree, before anything was done to it to alter its flavor.

I am over the moon with wonder, how fresh, how sweet, how OLIVE it tastes. Unhampered and unhindered by any other flavor, just the pure sweet goodness of the natural olive, the RICHNESS of its flavor when it’s not besieged by salt.  Don’t ask me how many I ate.

I also encounter wild berry bushes along my run.  Many of the berries are still an unripe red, as you can see, but now every so often the bushes produce a big fat ripe sweet juicy black one.

I halt my run to seek them out and to momentarily gorge.

The explosion of pleasure the rich, sweet berry juice sets off as I bite into it is indescribable.  The freshness, the sweetness, how WILD it tastes.  A sweet explosion.  Straight from the garden of Eden.

I find myself deriving pleasure from the simplest of things.  A cup of tea with a good friend, meeting eyes with a baby, seeing my neighbor walk his dog, birds singing, my cats climbing on me while I do Pilates, riding my bike around Lake Merritt and through the fragrance of the Oakland Morcom rose garden on my way to work.

The word simple means not combined with anything else, the essence of this word means uniquely itself.  The word came from the Latin simplicitatem when it meant not mixed with anything.

Simplicity to me is when I experience something uniquely as itself.  In its purity.  A friend, a berry, a purring cat, the wind in my face as I ride, the smell of jasmine.

Simplicity is purity.

May your life be filled with many simple pleasures that surprise you with exhilarating explosions of pure joy.

NOTE:  You’ll laugh when you read this one posted the following week.   https://wordpress.com/post/ingridgudenas.com/954

Love,

Ingrid