Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
It is a glorious day.
I'm back in my village and walking alongside a hedgerow where the grass now in the banks is starting to really shoot up,
Covering over the last of the pale yellow primroses and the bold bright yellow dandelions are pushing through as well as the glossy leaves of wild strawberries,
A green leaf with white flowers with a yellow center speckled up through that leaf coverage and it is such a glorious day.
I've actually been on the third day of my walk,
I'm back home now just getting myself sorted out having walked from South Brent to Ivy Bridge and it wasn't a direct route we were walking along rivers and lanes and through fields and then we climbed up steeply up up up onto the Ugbera Beacon and then a gradual descent then down towards Ivy Bridge itself.
It's been great being with my sister and my friend for company as we make our way along this 10-day trail and today enjoying these perfect walking conditions,
The blue sky,
The clouds,
It's just been an absolute delight and as we were walking along my sister commented that the beech tree which was starting to come into leaf,
The leaf buds were a kind of shiny brown and they looked almost like a chrysalis protecting the leaf itself before it came out,
Really reminded me of that and it's just so good to be out enjoying nature with those people who enjoy it alongside you and as we were talking today it's a really simple reflection that we came up with between us as we were talking we were just reflecting on friends and people that we admire and respect and my sister said look there's a friend and it's a mutual friend with all three of us and she said that one of the things she makes it her mission to do every day she endeavors to make someone smile.
Simple as that.
A mission to make somebody smile during your day and I rather liked that.
You see I know I can be a little bit serious and reflective sometimes and I can kind of go around enjoying a contentment within myself but I love this idea of endeavoring to make others smile and for me I rather liked it because I thought well if I if I'm going around making others smile that will mean I am smiling as well and when you're looking to make others smile as I found today on the walk because I thought well I'm gonna give this a go when I passed walkers coming in the other direction or we passed people in the villages we just walked past people and well I did anyway I walked past people and I tried to catch their eye and to smile and when I smiled and they caught my eye well they smiled too and it was quite nice to have these little tiny glimmers of connection with each other with other people.
So today is a mission really it's like would you take on this mission?
How many people can you get to smile during the day?
I mean don't count them up I'm not asking you to do that but it's just such a great way of pausing in life it gives your life punctuation marks where rather than you have your head down busy getting to the next place as soon as possible you're pausing you're connecting you're meeting the eyes of other people and the other conversation that came from this that we had was the realization that we really just don't know we really do not know what those moments of connection mean to another person we don't know if they've got anybody in their life we don't know whether they're lonely we don't know whether this little sliver of connection is the thing that has made their day it could be the highlight of the day to connect with another human being.
So my reflection today and I guess a challenge if you want to take it on board is why don't you make it your mission today just to see someone else smile and see whether when you smile and connect with them maybe eye contact whether your smile can have them smile too so that's a little fun mission if you want to take it on board and let me know how you get on it's always good to hear from you and don't forget I'll be back again tomorrow with another five minutes in nature so do join me again tomorrow and in the meantime see how many people you can get to smile during the day
