Things surface at the strangest times.

Ten years ago when I moved to Bavaria, my grandmother’s couch was delivered ten weeks after we arrived. It had gotten ‘lost’ according to the movers. By the time it finally landed in our house, it had travelled over 6,000 miles from its original place in Connecticut to the cow town where we lived.

As the movers brought the couch into our living room, a tube of lipstick fell from the interior of the couch. After all those miles and years, my grandmother’s presence could still be felt. She always said a lady was dressed as long as she was wearing lipstick and pearls. It was her way of reminding me that everything was going to be alright.

A decade later, as I culled through years of stuff in preparation for my move to Freiburg, it was my grandfather’s turn to have his say. His watch showed up in the palm of my hand in the kitchen. On the back was an inscription: 1931-1956 WHGrant. It was congratulating him for all his years of service with the company.

As I held his timepiece in my hand, I could feel the rhythm of time that his watch had measured. Oddly, the watch gave me an overwhelming feeling of timelessness.

Finding his watch was a sign to me that all things come in good time.

According to neuroscientist David Eagleman, we can slow down time simply by living enriching lives. The more detail we remember from our experiences, the longer our lives feel.

So if you are bored with your life, give it a kick with something new. You may not wish to move house, as I have chosen to, but bring some color back into your life by changing just one thing in your routine today. It will fire up your brain cells and give you the sense that time, and all that you experience in it, is rich and satisfying and beautiful.

Now that’s a life worth living indeed!