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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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