Mary’s Musings : Just a Thought!

Earlier in the week, I wrote on a greeting card, “Sometimes I sit and dream. Sometimes I just sit.”

Today I was sitting for nearly two hours, trying to use my schoolgirl sewing skills to repair a favourite garment. I have always tried to do so, but often the pile of mending built up while I was ‘too busy’ to do it.

While sitting today, I thought, “Isaac Newton is supposed to have been sitting under an apple tree when he had the thought which changed the world.” That was the ideas of the Laws of Gravity and Motion, as a result of thinking about why the apple fell as it did.

Legend has it also , that the favourite drink, of tea, was discovered when someone was sitting under a tree. Leaves from that tree fell into a bowl of boiling water which he was drinking from at the time,

Many of us remember more about the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066, from the wonderful Bayeux Tapestry than from the details of the Battle of Hastings .

The stitching of that tapestry must have involved many people working together , and possibly sitting chatting as they sewed.

As a child, I often watched Mum sit to darn socks, or knit a jumper, or create a new dress for me – all at the end of a day of housework, with no labour-saving devices.

That must have been very tiring, and yet, perhaps it was more satisfying to have a reason to take ‘time to think and be’, while creating something useful, rather than expecting to be ‘relaxed’ and ’entertained’ in an evening.

Just a thought!

Mary Garratt
14 June 2009