Your resolve to find happiness, and create it where you can, in the stream of things you can’t control is such a powerful insight. It seems to me to be related to the giving up of attention to another’s story. The paradox: we give up the effort to control what we can’t, and we find that this letting go actually results in many fewer feelings of out-of-controlness.

Turning our attention to what is, instead of what we think should be, or could have been if only, or might be if we can just…, seems to be a truly liberating mental state, a more generous way of being, generous to others as well as to ourselves. If life is what happens whilst we are planning something else (designing the dress you’re already wearing – brilliant!) then we’d better live and be in what actually happens here and now.

And this, I’m finding, is changing my attitude to mortality and dying. We can’t live entirely in the present moment, can we? (Damn! Missed the train again…) But living more often where we are instead of in some imagined alternative seems to me a healthier, happier alternative.
How sad Lillie has gone, but how inspiring is her little two minute gift to the rest of us.