For many of us, twenty-first century life can be summed up as: WAY. TOO. BUSY. Family, work, school, lessons, games, groceries, laundry, the gym, meetings, practices —oh, and hopefully a little time set aside for eating and sleeping. Constantly being bombarded with so many first-world demands can feel suffocating. Sometimes we barely can catch a breath! Add to this technologies, gadgets and gizmos that enable and entice us to be ever-available, ever-multitasking, and it’s easy to see why we are ever-exhausted.

I don’t know about you, but every now and then, in the midst of the mania, I need to take a nano-second to just “be.” To sniff the air after a thunderstorm; listen to birds chirping at dawn; gaze at the constellations at night – watch a sun set.

I know first-hand that this isn’t something everyone is automatically wired to do. It certainly isn’t in my Indians-coach husband’s DNA. He usually can’t slow down long enough to soak in the little things I find so refreshing and inspiring. But a few weeks ago, during a particularly intense game, the most wonderfully unexpected thing happen. Time-out was called. The Indian players hurried to gather around their coach for instruction, and then – they all looked skyward where brilliant red, pink and purple streaks had been painted across the evening sky. “Take a look at that sunset,” someone heard my husband say to his team. And then just like that, it was over.

The game resumed. Our team eventually won, and the “breath-taking” time-out was forever inked in the score book.