Fall In Love With The Little Things
Aren't They All Around Us [21]:
It’s a Sunday morning, midday sunlight piercing through your window. You woke up, grabbed your phone and started scrolling. It wasn’t long into the scrolling that an uncanny sense of trepidation arose. Your life a minute earlier was perfectly peaceful. A minute later, you wanted to throw your phone across the room, ran off to the Swiss mountains to live with cows in the summer. That was me many a day/night/weekend prior, spending excessive time on social media.
Strangely, the last two weeks have seen me playing Numb Little Bug by Em Beihold on repeat. When assessing my blessings and gratitude, I realize I have most of the things I need, meeting at least the two of the Maslow’s Pyramid. I have the basics: food, shelter, safety and the valuable: loving family (from afar that I miss very dearly), extremely supportive friends (also from afar). Yet, I feel like a numb little bug.
I talked about how adulthood provides exceptional wealth of optionality and freedom to pick and choose in Episode 19: How I protect my peace in adulthood on my podcast last week. I figure it was coming from the new found freedom of being a fully functioning adult with all options open and the world for the first time being my oyster.
On good timing, I also received these loving words from one of my favorite teachers Adriene Louise this past Sunday:
May be I do need a check in with myself, turning over the soil that covers what is going astray underneath: connectedness and purpose. I miss a lot of the sweet little old things that easily put a smile on my face, the tiniest seemingly silliest things.
Living 14,000 kilometers away from home, I compartmentalize my life. When I’m in America, this is version A of me: I work, I ‘hustle’, I travel endlessly and mindlessly because I don’t want to sit with my thoughts alone in my room. I am depressed at worst and disconnected at best. When I’m at home, there is a version B: I sleep in, I cook, I walk my dog, I take my time. I visit my grandmother every week, sometimes multiple times a week. I see my middle school English teacher, I sit in coffee shops in the Old Quarter and watch the leaves fall. I measure my days by how many books I have finished. I live with my parents and get scolded at for leaving my socks at the front door.
I approach my life in an all or nothing manner. I don’t get to have happiness, not even a semblance of that when I’m running my hamster wheel journey in the US. I don’t get to be selfish or lavish. When I’m home, I can release all that out.
Adriene’s loving words give me a gentle reminder. To fall in love with the little things, especially when I’m not stopping my run soon. When I was at home this is a trip to the market to grab fresh straw mushrooms with granny where subsequently she never fails to turn the mushrooms into a delicious egg dish. This was riding my sister on a teeny blue bike, picking her up after school. This was the utter joy when my dad picked me up from elementary school, me behind his motorbike chattering all the way home.
In my 22nd year around the sun, this looks more like a peaceful afternoon on the lake kayaking, a late night deep conversation that seems to never run out of topics to talk about, jokes that make the belly hurts and eyes teary, small tokens of love. I miss being made happy by the little things.
Can we bring that back? Our full presence with one’s another that can only be described as magical, the engrossing feeling of never wanting to do anything else but just to listen, talk and be together. I call on to you, and to all of us to make that happen.
For more inspiring discussion + practice for being lovingly present:
Katherout (I have been invested with her anti-capitalism and under-achiever transformation journey)
Joy Soldier Blog (The sweetest essays on love and life)
Can't wait to meet u and enjoy little happiness of eating banh ngot hk
Love you MD. Enjoy your time in Seattle and write about this city.