Stop and Smell the Horses.

Finding beauty in everyday life and questioning the ruler by which we measure a life well lived.

I’m writing this from Morocco on a glorious three week holiday.

A few days ago, I took a photograph of a horse standing on the beach. It wasn’t a horse I’d ridden, there wasn’t a particular story attached to it, and it certainly wasn’t a famous landmark. It was simply a horse that made me stop and take notice.

After I’d edited the photograph, I showed it to my husband and asked, “Is it a silly photo? It’s just a horse.”

His tongue in cheek answer made me smile. “No,” he said. “You know, there’s a blog in that.”

The horse isn’t really the point at all. It simply opened the door to a much bigger question.

What is it that makes something worthwhile?

It’s a question that has been following me throughout this holiday. Everyone who’s asked how our holiday is going has asked exactly the same thing.

“So… what have you been doing?”

It’s a perfectly natural question, and one I’ve asked countless people myself over the years. Yet I’ve become increasingly aware that hidden inside it is another question altogether. The question, “Are you making the most of your holiday?”

The difficulty lies in the fact that we have an unspoken idea of what “making the most of it” looks like.

Did you visit all the tourist attractions?

Did you go on lots of excursions?

Did you find the best restaurants?

Did you spend your days by the pool?

Did you tick off all the places everyone says you should see?

None of those things are wrong. If that’s your perfect holiday, then wonderful. Honestly, the world would be a very boring place if we all enjoyed the same things.

The interesting part is that those questions, those expectations, quietly become the ruler by which we measure whether a holiday was successful.

Our holiday hasn’t looked much like that at all.

We’ve wandered with no destination in mind other than 'the seafront'. We’ve watched horses being ridden into the sea on a hot day. We’ve admired beautiful tiles outside little shops. I’ve found myself stopping to photograph flowers spilling over old walls, colourful leaves, tiny details and moments that many people walk straight past.

We’ve enjoyed eating together, talking together, and enjoyed simply being somewhere different.

I’ve also spent hours working on my business. I’ve rewritten large sections of my website. I’ve been studying. I’ve been planning. I’ve been writing.

When I’ve mentioned that to people, they’ve replied, “Well, make sure you’re getting some downtime too.”

The funny thing is, I am. That’s the part that’s difficult to explain. Writing at home and writing here are not the same experience.

At home there is always something waiting. Washing to put away. Dusting that probably ought to be done. Phone calls. Emails. Jobs that seem to multiply the moment you’ve finished the last one. Even sitting in the garden with a cup of tea comes with the knowledge that, in twenty minutes, you really ought to get on with the rest of your day.

Here there isn’t that constant pull. I can sit looking out at the view with no timer running in the back of my mind. We can wander without deciding exactly where we’re going. A conversation can begin with a photograph of a horse and, because nothing interrupts it, slowly become a discussion about life, purpose and what really matters.

The work itself hasn’t changed. The space around it has. And that has made me realise something about how we enjoy ourselves. It's not exactly that I think we’ve forgotten how to enjoy ourselves. It's that I think we’ve become disconnected from enjoying the simple things without feeling the need to justify them.

We’ve become so used to measuring life against a 'standard' ruler that we rarely stop to ask whether it was ever our ruler in the first place. And the same thing happens far beyond holidays.

From a very young age we’re given a fairly clear picture of what success is supposed to look like. We should achieve. We should strive. We should maximise our potential. We should make something of ourselves.

There is nothing wrong with any of those aspirations. Ambition has built hospitals, discovered medicines, created businesses and changed the course of history. The world needs people who dream big and work hard to make those dreams a reality.

But life was never designed to exist entirely in that energy.

There also has to be space for stillness. For curiosity. For noticing. For appreciation. For connection. For simply being.

Without that balance, all we do is strive for the next thing without ever really arriving where we are.

Ironically, even being has become something we feel we have to achieve. We book mindfulness classes. We schedule meditation. We complete yoga sessions. We download apps that remind us to breathe.

All of those things have enormous value, but isn’t it interesting that we’ve reached a point where simply being present has become another item on our to-do list?

Society has become incredibly good at teaching us how to 'do'. It's rather less skilled at teaching us simply to 'be'. And it certainly doesn't give us permission to simply 'be'.

I wonder whether that’s why so many people carry a quiet anxiety that they’re not fulfilling their purpose, because their life doesn’t look extraordinary enough.

We see extraordinary achievements celebrated every day. The bigger the success, the more attention it attracts. The more visible the accomplishment, the more valuable it appears. We begin to absorb the idea that our own lives should look like that too.

But whose ruler are we measuring our lives against? And why are we still allowing somebody else’s ruler to define what good and enough look like?

My purpose will not look like yours. Your definition of a life well lived will not look like mine.

And neither of us is wrong.

The mistake is believing there is only one way to measure a meaningful life.

Some people will build companies.

Some will discover cures.

Some will stand on stages and inspire thousands.

And thank goodness they do.

But others will create safety, warmth and belonging wherever they go. They will notice the person who feels invisible. They will listen without trying to fix. They will make someone laugh on a difficult day. They will create beauty. They will care deeply for the people around them. And that is enough.

None of those things appear particularly impressive when measured against society’s ruler.

Yet imagine trying to build a world without them.

Those acts may not currently appear on our lists of achievements, but maybe it’s time they did.

The longer I live, the more I realise that purpose isn’t primarily about what we accomplish. It’s about how we show up while we’re accomplishing it. It’s about the values we bring, the kindness we offer, the beauty we notice and the presence we allow ourselves to experience.

That doesn’t mean we stop striving. It means we stop believing that striving is the whole story.

There is a rhythm to life that asks us to 'do', and another that asks us simply to 'be'. Both matter. One without the other leaves us out of balance.

As I look back through the photographs on my phone, I smile. There are sunsets, of course.

But there are also flowers growing over old walls, beautifully patterned tiles outside tiny shops, colourful leaves that caught my attention and, yes, a horse standing on a beach.

I don’t tend to come home only with photographs of what I was supposed to notice. In large part I come home with photographs of the moments that made me stop.

And I think that’s a lesson I’ll be bringing home with me. Not that we should dream smaller. Not that ambition is somehow wrong. Not that ordinary lives are all we should hope for.

Quite the opposite.

This isn’t a blog about lowering our expectations of life. It’s about raising our appreciation of it.

Because the extraordinary can be found in the ordinary, if only we stop for long enough to see it.

Maybe the real question isn’t whether or not we’re living extraordinary lives. Maybe it’s whether we’ve become so busy measuring our lives with somebody else’s ruler that we’ve forgotten to notice the extra ordinary life that’s already unfolding right in front of us.