Happiness from Small Things (with a note to sourpusses) 1


Small things make me happy.


iStock photo

I can get deliriously happy over simple things. I realize that this has helped keep me steady even with the doom and gloom that occurs in the world, whether it is distant or up close and personal. I’m here to tell you that the gloom and doom is not the only reality. It is a big part of what happens in the world but not, for many of us, the major part.

Here are some of the small, simple things that have made me happy recently. I don’t know if you have to be me to appreciate them but they sure made me feel good:

  • Finding a set of lovely white porcelain Chinese soup spoons for $4.99. I made soups for two weeks just so I could use those spoons.
  • Having a former client email me to say she’d like to underwrite my doing coaching for an aspiring artist. The contract is small but it is unexpected and so welcome.
  • Fixing a big breakfast (homefries, homemade biscuits, mushroom omelets, fruit salad) for my cousins and enjoying food and conversation. (I didn’t try to impress, I just made my simple fare and it was a hit.)*
  • Watering my flowers and dead-heading them.
  • Suddenly realizing that a shift of sidetables would (and did) make my sitting room more lovely and spacious.
  • Walking Castle Island, the Arboretum, up Guild Hill in Roxbury, up and down the Monroe Terrace streets in Dorchester, down the path by the Mattapan trolley, in the West End by Mass. General Hospital and watching the city wake up, etc. Each walk makes me realize, yet again, what a beautiful walking city this is.
  • Having another birthday and watching the birthday cards and email greetings roll in (you give, you get).
  • Feeling good about said birthday!  Another year accomplished, the blessings, lessons, happenings of the coming year to look forward to.
  • Working my way through my costume jewelry drawer and boxes. and finding new treasures to wear.
  • Eliminating paper napkins and using cloth napkins at home. Makes me feel simply elegant and elegantly green.
  • Reading the novel in stories, Olive Kitteridge  by Elizabeth Strout, which I found incredibly moving and exquistely conceived and written.

I am so blessed to be happy with small things because small things, it turns out, are my province. I have accepted this.

But some people (plural) – I won’t say who but you know who you are – some people wouldn’t recognize happy if she looked like Naomi Campbell  and was walking toward you naked with open arms.

Note:
*
Really anything you cook and share with people will be a hit. It’s the sharing that’s the point, right? But, there have been times when I agonized so over what to fix, the table setting, etc., that I whipped myself into a frenzy instead of just doing what I could do in the moment.

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Love you but not absorbing your pain
Wonderful world, wonderful people


About Candelaria Silva

Candelaria Silva-Collins is a marketing, community outreach and programming consultant; writer; and trainer/facilitator who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She has designed and facilitated workshops on a wide variety of topics including communication, facilitation, job search skills, team building, and parenting issues. She currently coordinates the Community Membership Program of the Huntington Theatre Company. Her work as Director of ACT Roxbury was profiled in several publications, including The Creative Communities Builders Handbook. Candelaria’s children’s stories, short stories, essays and reviews have been published in local and national publications and she is an active blogger. Her publications include the booklets, Handling Rejection; Pushing through Shyness: Networking Tips when You’re Shy, Slow to Warm Up or Just don’t Feel you Belong; and Real Questions about Sex & Relationships for Teens: A Discussion Guide for Parents. She has served on the boards of Goddard College, Wheelock Family Theatre, Boston Foundation for Architecture, and Discover Roxbury. She is currently Chair, Designators of the Henderson Foundation.

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One thought on “Happiness from Small Things (with a note to sourpusses)

  • miruspeg

    Beautiful post Candelaria!
    There is a song by an Australian songwriter Paul Kelly called “From little things big things grow” and it sums up this post perfectly.
    I especially love these words you wrote below:

    “I am so blessed to be happy with small things because small things, it turns out, are my province.”

    Hugs and love
    Peggy xxx