Bottling Wine Helps To Focus.

 Being in the moment!

We did bottling today. Sounds strange unless you part of the wine and beer making world. What it means is that the barrels of wine eventually need to be transferred into more user friendly bottles, and that is the process of bottling. Of course via a clued up system of filtering...

We bottle still mainly by hand. Nothing high-tech for us. Each of us has their station and Bob being the strongest ( and incidentally also the youngest ) is in charge of putting the caps on the filled bottles and stacking the bottles into crates. Mum is the one who makes sure everything runs smoothly, doing the lion's share of the bottling work and Albert is integral to making sure the filtered wine keeps flowing. A well oiled family affair.

My humble job during bottling is the filling of the bottles with wine. Wine that flows through a fine funnel, which only stops when one lifts the bottle of the funnel. Today I had two funnels going at the same time, and let me tell you, it isn't easy keeping track of them. Quite a number of times the bottle floweth over!

Just one glance at Bob, or mum or Albert had me loose my place in the scheme of things. That is how quickly it goes. One moment of not concentrating on my task at hand and the wine floweth over... Kind of a reminder about life.

How often do we actually focus on the task at hand? Be it a conversation, watching tv, cooking or driving. Often our thoughts run miles ahead of us thinking of either the future or the past, instead of the all important present. 

I kind of think that if we could be present, focused and in the moment most of the time, life would be that much more fulfilling and enjoyable. Perhaps we wouldn't achieve as much as society expects from us due to constantly nudging us into the multi-tasking lane, but then again, maybe we wouldn't be so stressed, sick or unhappy either. Might be worth a shot at focusing on being in the moment at least some of the time...

Biggi