The older I get, the more I understand that a beautiful life doesn’t necessarily need to be a bigger one.
I took this photograph in 2018, simply because I thought it was beautiful. I remember sitting inside that little rustic room, looking through the glass at the water, the mountains and the late afternoon light, and thinking that I wanted to capture the moment.
I wasn’t thinking about growing older, changing priorities or the strange ways our understanding of happiness shifts as life moves along. I certainly didn’t imagine that years later I would look at the photograph and realise that what stayed with me wasn’t really the place at all but the way I felt while I was there.
There was nowhere I needed to be and nothing waiting urgently for me to deal with. Nobody needed an answer, there wasn’t a list of jobs running through my head and I wasn’t wondering what I should be doing next. There was simply a beautiful view, a comfortable chair, the gentle afternoon light and that wonderful feeling of being somewhere else for a little while.
At the time, I thought I was just enjoying a holiday but looking at the photograph now, I wonder if it was a lesson. Maybe I was actually being given a little glimpse of the kind of life I would eventually come to appreciate most.
Perhaps that is why the photograph has stayed with me for so long. It reminds me of a time when I wasn’t trying to make anything happen, improve anything or tick something off a list. I was simply there and perhaps there is more value in that than we give ourselves permission to believe. Sometimes the moments that teach us the most don’t announce themselves as lessons at the time.
When we’re younger, life can feel like one enormous list of things we need to achieve before we’re finally allowed to relax. We need to finish school, find work, earn money, buy a home, make the home look nice, perhaps raise a family, work harder, save more and keep moving towards some imaginary point where everything will eventually settle down. The funny thing is that the finish line seems to have a remarkable ability to move just as we get close to it.
I spent plenty of years thinking that way, and I don’t think I was unusual in doing so. There was always something next to look forward to, something that needed fixing or improving, somewhere we wanted to go or something we thought would make life just a little bit better. Even holidays could become another item on the list, with places to see, restaurants to try and activities to squeeze into a few precious days before returning home exhausted and needing another holiday to recover from the first one.
There is a certain irony in that, isn’t there? We work hard because we want to enjoy our lives, but sometimes we become so busy organising, managing and improving those lives that we don’t actually stop long enough to enjoy them. We tell ourselves that we’ll slow down when the children are older, when the house is sorted, when work settles down or when we’ve finally finished the thing we’ve been trying to finish for the past six months, and somehow there is always another thing waiting patiently in the queue.
Perhaps that is one of the great tricks life plays on us. We imagine happiness is just around the corner, attached to the next achievement or purchase or milestone, and then we arrive there only to discover that ordinary life is still waiting for us. The house still needs cleaning, the bills still need paying and somebody has somehow managed to put an empty milk bottle back into the fridge. At some point, we have to ask ourselves whether we are actually enjoying the journey or simply becoming very efficient at getting somewhere.
I’ve noticed that my idea of what makes a life feel good has become considerably less complicated as I’ve got older. When I was younger, I could easily be impressed by the big things: a beautiful house, an exciting holiday, something new and shiny, a packed itinerary or a restaurant everyone was talking about. These days, give me a comfortable chair, a good view and a cup of coffee that I am actually allowed to drink while it is still hot, and I’m considerably easier to please.
There is something wonderfully freeing about realising that you don’t have to be constantly impressed by your own life. A peaceful afternoon can be enough, as can a meal around a table with people you love, sitting outside while the light changes or finding an old photograph that suddenly brings an entire chapter of your life rushing back. Perhaps as we get older, we become less interested in how life looks from the outside and much more interested in how it feels from the inside.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me. I don’t necessarily want the biggest house, the busiest calendar or the most exciting plans anymore, and I certainly don’t feel the need to fill every quiet space with something productive. There is a particular kind of contentment that comes from knowing you don’t have to keep proving that you’re enjoying yourself; sometimes you can simply sit quietly, look around and realise that, for this particular moment, everything is perfectly fine.
Somewhere along the way, we became remarkably good at making simple things complicated. We don’t always simply drink coffee anymore; we need the perfect coffee machine, the beautiful mug, the carefully styled breakfast and perhaps a photograph of the whole arrangement to prove that we know how to enjoy a slow morning. Even relaxing seems to have become something we need to purchase, plan and perfect, which is rather amusing when you think about it.
I sometimes wonder whether we have become so focused on creating a beautiful life that we’ve forgotten to notice the beautiful parts of the life we already have. A garden doesn’t need to look like it belongs in a magazine before we can sit outside in it, and a home doesn’t have to be perfectly decorated before it can feel warm and welcoming. Sometimes the best moments happen in rooms with things lying around, slightly mismatched furniture and evidence that actual people live there.
That is one of the reasons I still love this photograph. If you look closely, there are things on the table and the chairs outside aren’t arranged as though someone spent an afternoon styling them for a magazine shoot, while the room itself is dark, rustic and wonderfully imperfect. Yet when I look at it, I don’t see anything that needs fixing; I see somewhere I would happily sit again, and perhaps that tells me more about what I value now than any beautifully decorated room ever could.
I think I’m becoming much more interested in homes and places that feel lived in rather than perfect. Give me a comfortable chair that has a bit of history, a wooden table with a few scratches and a view that makes me stop what I’m doing for a moment, and I will take that over something pristine and untouchable any day. There is something deeply comforting about being surrounded by evidence that life has actually happened there.
I used to think luxury was mostly about having more, but these days I think one of the greatest luxuries we can have is time. Time to sit without feeling guilty, time to have a conversation that isn’t squeezed between appointments, time to cook something slowly, time to finish a book or simply time to look out of a window without immediately reaching for our phones.
That kind of time can be surprisingly difficult to find, particularly when we’re accustomed to measuring the value of a day by how much we managed to accomplish. I’ve certainly had moments when I’ve sat down and immediately started mentally listing everything I should be doing instead, from the washing and emails to the cupboard I’ve been meaning to sort out since approximately 2019. Life has an impressive ability to produce another job just as soon as we finish the previous one.
But the older I get, the more I’m beginning to question whether everything really does need to be finished. Perhaps the washing can wait another hour, perhaps the cupboard will survive another day without being reorganised and perhaps sitting quietly for half an hour isn’t wasted time at all. Maybe it is part of living, and perhaps we shouldn’t have to earn the right to rest by exhausting ourselves first.
That photograph reminds me of this more than anything else. I wasn’t achieving anything particularly important when I took it, but I was living a moment that I still remember years later, and perhaps that is the point. A beautiful life isn’t necessarily a busy life or an impressive one; sometimes it is simply a life where we have enough time to notice that we are living it.
There is a strange thing that happens as we get older. We can spend years collecting things, experiences and responsibilities, believing that each new addition will somehow make life feel fuller, only to discover that fullness and having more are not actually the same thing. Sometimes a life becomes so crowded that there is very little room left for the things that genuinely make us happy. I think I’m slowly becoming much more interested in what I can remove from my life than what I can add to it.
Perhaps that is why decluttering has become so appealing to me. It isn’t really about having a house where every cupboard looks as though it belongs in a catalogue, because frankly, that sounds exhausting and I’m not sure where everyone is supposed to put the things they actually use. It is more about creating enough breathing room to appreciate the things that matter, rather than constantly having to move, clean, organise and look after things that don’t.
I’ve started to realise that every possession comes with a tiny job attached to it. Something has to be stored, cleaned, repaired, dusted, remembered or eventually decided about, and when you have enough things, those little jobs can quietly become a full-time occupation. There is something wonderfully freeing about looking around your home and knowing that most of what you see is either useful, meaningful or something that genuinely makes you smile.
I think about this whenever I look at that photograph. There are plenty of lovely things in it, but what draws me in isn’t the furniture or even the beautiful rustic room; it is the feeling of being there. I can almost imagine sitting at that table again, looking through those windows and watching the afternoon light settle over the landscape, and that memory is worth considerably more to me than anything I could have brought home from the trip.
We spend an extraordinary amount of time worrying about what we can take with us when we go somewhere. We pack clothes, toiletries, chargers, books, shoes and all the other things we have convinced ourselves are absolutely essential, only to discover that the moments we remember years later are usually the ones that weren’t on the packing list. A funny conversation, a spectacular sunset, the smell of breakfast cooking or sitting somewhere beautiful with someone you love can stay with you long after the expensive souvenir has found its way to the back of a cupboard.
Maybe that is why experiences have started to mean something different to me. I don’t necessarily need every holiday to be adventurous or every weekend to be filled with activities, because sometimes the greatest luxury is simply having somewhere beautiful to sit and nowhere particularly important to go. There is something deeply restorative about allowing a place to unfold around you instead of immediately asking what you should see, where you should go and what you should do next.
This may sound rather odd coming from someone who enjoys having things to do, but I actually think boredom has become a bit of a lost art. The moment there is a quiet few minutes, most of us reach for our phones, scroll through something, check a message or find some tiny task to occupy ourselves. We have become remarkably uncomfortable with empty spaces, even though some of our best thoughts seem to arrive when we aren’t trying to think about anything at all.
I remember when waiting meant simply waiting. You could sit in a doctor’s surgery and stare out of the window, stand in a queue and watch people going about their day or travel somewhere without feeling compelled to document every minute of it. There was no little glowing rectangle in our hands demanding our attention, and while I’m certainly grateful for modern technology, I sometimes wonder whether we’ve handed it rather too much of our spare time.
There is something lovely about letting your mind wander. You might remember something you haven’t thought about in years, notice a bird in the garden, suddenly solve a problem that has been bothering you or simply spend twenty minutes thinking about absolutely nothing of consequence. Perhaps that is not wasted time; perhaps it is the mental equivalent of opening a window and letting some fresh air into a room.
One of the things I remember most strongly about the moment captured in my photograph is that feeling of having nowhere else to be. We often talk about holidays as though the destination is the important part, but sometimes the real luxury is what happens when we finally stop following a schedule. There is no alarm demanding that we get up, no appointment looming in the afternoon and no little voice in our heads reminding us that we really ought to be making better use of our time.
I think that feeling becomes increasingly precious as life gets busier. When you’re responsible for other people, a home, work, family commitments and all the ordinary business of being an adult, there can be surprisingly few moments when nobody needs anything from you. Even when the house is quiet, your mind can still be running around making lists, solving imaginary problems and remembering something you forgot three days ago.
Perhaps this is why travel can feel so restorative. It gives us permission to step outside our usual routines and temporarily become people who don’t know what day it is. We can wake up slowly, wander somewhere without a particular purpose, have lunch when we’re hungry and sit outside until the light disappears, and somehow nobody thinks we’re being unproductive.
The older I get, the more I wonder why we wait for holidays to give ourselves permission to enjoy these things. We don’t necessarily need a mountain view or a beautiful swimming pool to create a slower, more peaceful day, although I certainly wouldn’t complain if one happened to appear. There are little pieces of that feeling available in ordinary life too, if we stop rushing past them.
Perhaps it means drinking coffee outside instead of while standing at the kitchen counter. Perhaps it means making supper slowly one evening rather than treating cooking as another chore to get through as quickly as possible. It could be sitting in the garden after dinner, listening to the birds and watching the sky change colour, even though there are still dishes in the sink waiting for us.
I’m learning that the dishes will always be there. The laundry has never once packed its bags and moved out because I ignored it for an afternoon, and I suspect the dust has developed a rather unhealthy attachment to my furniture by now. There is always going to be something that could be done, but that doesn’t mean it always needs to be done now, and that distinction has become increasingly important to me.
I don’t think slow living means abandoning ambition, responsibility or all the things that make life interesting. I still like having projects, making plans, travelling, creating things and occasionally deciding that something absolutely must be reorganised immediately because I’ve suddenly become convinced that the entire house will function better if one particular cupboard is sorted out. Slowing down isn’t about doing nothing; it is about becoming more intentional about what deserves our energy.
There is a big difference between having a full life and having a frantic one. A full life can contain family, friendships, work, creativity, travel, gardening, laughter and the occasional minor disaster involving mashed potato on the kitchen floor. A frantic life can contain exactly the same things, but somehow you experience them all while mentally racing towards the next thing.
I think what I really want is not less life but less rushing through it. I want to notice the conversations, remember the ordinary afternoons, enjoy the meals and appreciate the people sitting across the table rather than constantly wondering what needs to happen afterwards. Perhaps that is what slowing down really means: not doing less simply for the sake of doing less, but being present enough to experience what we’re already doing.
There was a time when I might have looked at a beautiful place like the one in my photograph and thought about what I could buy to recreate that feeling at home. Perhaps I would have noticed the furniture, the rustic décor or the view and started mentally planning how I could bring pieces of it back with me. Now I find myself thinking less about what I could buy and more about what the place made me feel.
That shift has been surprisingly liberating. I don’t need to recreate somebody else’s beautiful life in my own home; I can take the feeling that mattered to me and find my own version of it. Maybe that means a comfortable chair beside a window, an old wooden table, a few plants, a favourite mug and somewhere peaceful to sit at the end of the day.
It doesn’t have to be expensive or perfectly styled. In fact, I think I would rather have a slightly battered chair that people actually sit in than a beautiful one that everyone is afraid to touch. Give me a home where someone can put their feet up, spill a cup of tea, laugh too loudly and leave a book on the table, and I will take that kind of comfort over perfection every single time.
Maybe that is the real lesson hidden inside this photograph. At the time, I thought I was simply enjoying a lovely holiday in a beautiful place, but looking back, I think I was experiencing something I would only understand properly much later. I was experiencing what it felt like to have enough time, enough quiet and enough space to simply be where I was.
We don’t always recognise the things we will miss until they’ve passed. A particular afternoon can seem completely ordinary while we’re living it, then years later we find ourselves wishing we could step back into it for just ten minutes. That is why I think it is worth paying attention to the ordinary moments now, rather than assuming the important memories will only be made during the big occasions.
Perhaps the beautiful life isn’t waiting somewhere ahead of us after all. Perhaps it is tucked into the quiet mornings, the meals with family, the cups of tea, the gardens, the old photographs, the comfortable chairs and the afternoons when nothing particularly exciting happens. Perhaps we don’t need to wait for the next holiday to feel grateful for the life we already have.
And perhaps that is what this photograph has been quietly reminding me all these years.
Don’t rush past this. You might miss it.
One of the things getting older has taught me is that there is a danger in always waiting for the right time to enjoy something. We keep the good wine for a special occasion, the pretty dishes for visitors and the beautiful clothes for somewhere important, as though ordinary Tuesday afternoons somehow don’t qualify. Meanwhile, the years keep moving along, completely uninterested in whether we have finally found the appropriate occasion to use the good stuff.
I have done this myself more times than I care to admit. I’ve kept things because I was saving them, postponed things because I thought there would be a better opportunity and occasionally looked at something lovely in my home and thought, “I’ll use that when…” without ever quite deciding when that magical occasion was going to arrive. The older I get, the more I think that perhaps Tuesday afternoon is a perfectly respectable occasion.
Life is made up mostly of ordinary days. The big celebrations are wonderful, of course, but they are little islands in an enormous sea of everyday life, and it is what happens between those celebrations that makes up most of our existence. If we only allow ourselves to enjoy the beautiful things when something special happens, we could spend an awful lot of our lives waiting for something special to happen.
There is a particular kind of happiness that comes from paying attention to things we might once have walked straight past. The smell of rain on warm earth, sunlight coming through the kitchen window, the first flower appearing in the garden or the sound of someone laughing in another room can suddenly make an ordinary day feel quite extraordinary. None of these things require a reservation, a shopping trip or a credit card, which is rather convenient.
I think our attention is one of the most valuable things we have, and yet it is something we give away remarkably easily. We can spend an hour scrolling through other people’s holidays, homes and apparently perfect lives without noticing the sunset happening outside our own window. We can watch somebody else’s dinner being prepared on a screen while our own supper is sitting on the stove, waiting to be enjoyed.
Perhaps slowing down begins with simply looking up. Not in some grand, life-changing way, but by occasionally putting the phone down, stepping outside or sitting quietly with a cup of tea and noticing what is actually happening around us. There is a whole world going on in the background of our lives, and sometimes we are so busy trying to get somewhere that we forget to look at where we are.
Perfection has always seemed like a rather exhausting goal to me, and I find myself increasingly suspicious of it. A perfectly tidy home is lovely to look at, but a home where people actually feel comfortable enough to make a mess is far more interesting. A perfectly planned holiday might be wonderful, but some of my favourite memories have come from the things that weren’t planned at all.
The photograph I took in 2018 certainly wasn’t carefully styled. I didn’t move the furniture, clear every surface or spend half an hour deciding where the light would look best before taking it. I simply saw something that made me stop and I took a photograph, and perhaps that is why I still love it so much.
There is something wonderfully reassuring about imperfect memories. They don’t need to be polished to be precious, and the photograph doesn’t need to capture every detail perfectly for me to remember how that afternoon felt. Sometimes the slightly wonky, ordinary photographs become the ones we treasure most because they transport us back to a real moment rather than showing us something that was created purely to look beautiful.
I’ve become much more interested in homes that tell a story. I love rooms where you can see that people actually live there, where an old piece of furniture sits happily beside something newer, where photographs have been collected over many years and where there is perhaps a chair that nobody is allowed to throw away because it belonged to somebody important.
I don’t think a home needs to follow a particular decorating trend to be beautiful. It needs to feel comfortable when you walk through the door, like your shoulders can drop a little and you don’t have to worry about whether you’ve put your handbag in the wrong place. For me, the loveliest homes are not necessarily the most expensive ones; they are the ones that have personality.
That is one of the things I love about the rustic style. It allows things to have history, texture and imperfections, and it doesn’t demand that everything match perfectly. An old wooden dresser, a collection of mismatched crockery, a basket filled with blankets or a table with a few marks from years of use can tell you far more about a home than a room where everything looks as though nobody is allowed to touch it.
I think growing older can also make us a little less concerned about other people’s opinions. Perhaps we finally realise that most people are far too busy worrying about their own lives to spend nearly as much time thinking about ours as we imagine they do. That can be an incredibly freeing realisation.
There are things I might once have worried about that simply don’t seem worth the energy anymore. Someone might not like the way I’ve decorated something, they might think I’m spending too much time in the garden or they might wonder why I’ve decided that an old piece of furniture deserves to stay when it could easily be replaced. At some point, you realise that you are the one who has to live your life, so you may as well make it comfortable for yourself.
Perhaps that is another form of slowing down. When we stop constantly measuring ourselves against other people, we get an enormous amount of mental space back. We can choose the things we genuinely enjoy instead of spending our energy trying to keep up with somebody else’s idea of what a successful, beautiful or interesting life should look like.
This doesn’t mean I have suddenly become some perfectly minimalist person who can fit everything she owns into one tasteful basket. That would be a rather alarming development, and anyone who has accumulated a lifetime of books, photographs, sentimental objects and “this might come in handy one day” items knows exactly what I mean. I still have things I love, things I probably don’t need and things I have absolutely no explanation for keeping.
But I am becoming more thoughtful about what I allow into my life. I would rather spend money on a memorable experience than another object that will eventually need somewhere to live, and I would rather have photographs of people I love than cupboards full of things I bought because they happened to be on sale. There is something comforting about realising that the things I value most cannot really be replaced by shopping.
A beautiful afternoon is free. A good conversation is free. Sitting outside watching the sunset costs nothing, and neither does laughing until your stomach hurts with somebody who knows you well. The older I get, the more I realise that some of life’s richest experiences are also the ones that don’t come with a price tag.
When I look back at photographs from holidays, I sometimes notice something interesting. I remember the places, of course, but the strongest memories are often connected to people rather than scenery. I remember conversations, silly jokes, meals that went on for hours and moments when someone said something that made everybody laugh.
Even this photograph, which is so much about the beautiful surroundings, makes me think about the people who shared that time with me. A spectacular view is lovely, but it becomes a memory because someone was there to experience it with you. Years later, it is often not the mountain or the swimming pool that you remember most clearly, but who was sitting beside you when you looked at it.
That has changed the way I think about time with people. I don’t necessarily need elaborate gatherings or expensive outings anymore, because some of the best conversations happen around a kitchen table or sitting outside with a cup of coffee. There is something very special about ordinary time together when nobody is rushing off to the next thing.
When I talk about wanting a slower life, I don’t mean that I want everything to stop. I don’t want to give up travelling, creating, working towards things I care about or having a house full of people and noise when the mood takes me. I simply don’t want to rush through all of those things so quickly that I forget to experience them.
I want to be able to enjoy a holiday without feeling that I have to squeeze every possible experience into it. I want to sit in a garden without feeling guilty because there are weeds somewhere that need attention, and I want to drink my coffee while it is hot rather than reheating it three times because I became distracted by everything else. These might sound like tiny things, but perhaps life is mostly made up of tiny things.
Maybe a slower life isn’t about changing everything. Perhaps it is about changing our relationship with the things that are already there. It is about allowing ourselves to pause, choosing what deserves our attention and accepting that not every moment needs to be productive to have value.
And so I keep coming back to that photograph. It was taken years ago, on an ordinary holiday afternoon that I could easily have forgotten, but somehow the image stayed with me. Every time I see it, I am reminded of the feeling of being somewhere beautiful without needing to hurry away from it.
I think that is what I want more of now. Not necessarily more holidays, more possessions or more impressive experiences, but more moments when I am completely aware that I am exactly where I want to be. More afternoons that don’t need to become anything else, more conversations that aren’t cut short and more ordinary days that I actually remember.
Perhaps the greatest lesson wasn’t about the place at all. It was about attention, gratitude and the realisation that a good life doesn’t have to look extraordinary from the outside to feel extraordinary when you are living it.
And maybe, after all these years, I’m finally learning that the point isn’t to get somewhere else. The point is to be here while I’m here.
Slow living is a way of approaching everyday life more intentionally rather than constantly rushing from one task or commitment to another. It can involve appreciating ordinary moments, making time for rest, reducing unnecessary busyness and focusing more attention on the things that genuinely matter.
You don’t need to completely change your lifestyle to begin living more slowly. Start with small changes such as eating without your phone, sitting outside for a few minutes, taking a walk without rushing, enjoying your morning coffee or deliberately leaving some unscheduled time in your day.
Not at all. Slow living isn’t about becoming unproductive or giving up responsibilities. It is more about being intentional with your time and allowing yourself to experience what you are doing instead of constantly rushing towards the next task.
Start paying attention to ordinary experiences that already make you feel good. A quiet cup of tea, a meal with family, time in the garden, listening to music, reading a book or watching the sunset can all become meaningful when you give yourself permission to actually enjoy them.
As we grow older, we often become more aware that time is limited and that many of the things we once thought were important don’t matter as much as we expected. This can make relationships, memories, peaceful moments and everyday experiences feel increasingly valuable.
If this reflection has made you think about slowing down, simplifying your surroundings or appreciating the little things a little more, you might enjoy some of these other Rustic Daisy stories. They explore many of the same ideas from different angles — creating a home that feels good, letting go of what no longer matters and finding joy in the ordinary parts of life.
28 Things I Stopped Buying And Don’t Miss
For anyone who has started to realise that having more doesn’t necessarily mean enjoying life more.
25 Things You Can Declutter Today Without Regret
A gentle approach to clearing some of the things that take up space without making your home feel like a minimalist showroom.
Creating A Cosy Home After A Major Life Transition
Because a home doesn’t have to be perfect to become a place of comfort, safety and belonging.
Cozy Doesn’t Mean Expensive: How I Created A Warm Home On A Tight Budget
Simple ideas for creating a warm and welcoming home without spending a fortune.
Gardening And Emotional Wellness
A look at why spending time growing, planting and caring for things can be so good for our sense of wellbeing.
The Unexpected Joy Of Growing Herbs At Home
Sometimes the smallest things — even a few herbs growing on a windowsill — can bring an unexpected amount of pleasure.
Why Travel Heals The Soul After Difficult Seasons
A reflection on how getting away from our usual surroundings can sometimes give us the space to see life differently.
What To Keep When You Can’t Keep Everything
A thoughtful look at the emotional side of deciding what deserves a place in our homes and our lives.
Wherever you are today, I hope you find something beautiful to notice.
Until next time…
Stay curious. Stay kind. Keep finding the beauty in everyday life.
