I think, as human beings, we have a tendency to put a disproportionate amount of emphasis on all the big-ticket items that we believe will bring us happiness.  The prestigious and lucrative career, the ideal partner, the perfect family, and all the trappings of success.  But it’s been my experience that it’s the smaller, more ephemeral and idiosyncratic things to which we should pay closer attention.  Tiny moments and sensations, apparently weightless, seemingly insignificant, and yet their abundance, if we choose to appreciate them, can transform the inner terrain of our lives as dramatically as an accumulation of snowflakes can transform the landscape beyond our windows.  The smell of a freshly brewed cup of coffee or a newly peeled orange; a few minutes spent enjoying the feel of sunlight on your face; losing yourself for an hour or two in the pages of a good book: these are all very small but very important things.

For as long as I can remember, I have been an obsessive keeper of journals, an inveterate chronicler of personal feelings and events.  I can’t recall a time, at least not since middle school, when I haven’t had a pen and some form of notebook at hand.  Some of these I have kept, many have been lost, and great many of them have been ripped up and burned for a variety of reasons.  None of them have been meant for any kind of sharing.

Mostly, their rambling pages have been places where I’ve placed my hurt, my pain, my fears, my grandiose plans, my fantasies and infatuations, my petty grudges, my foolish denials, and many other kinds of cringe inducing ephemera.  Thank god for paper recycling bins and backyard fire pits.  The ones I like the best, though, and can’t bring myself to rip out, are the small descriptions, factual and unembellished, of seemingly minor things.  Sharing a cigarette with a friend, or watching my dog bury her head in the snow.

More and more, over the past few years, I’ve just been using my notebooks to make lists and very brief descriptions of things that gave my senses and my soul a brief lift, all the fleeting pleasures and that might otherwise fly under the radar of consciousness.  The smell and feel of an Icelandic wool sweater, for example.  A quartet of cardinals at the bird feeder.  A fortuitous parking spot.  A smoothly executed gear shift.  Small acts of kindness and courtesy.  Watching old couples swing dancing at a wedding.  Winter winds making half-formed words on a cottage window.  The click of heels on a marble floor.  A blob of amber light dancing across the ceiling.  Standing on a rooftop at night, watching a stream of cars flow like radiant blood through the veins of the city.

At the end of the day, I don’t have any great understanding of the meaning of life, if there even is one.  All I know is, taking things for granted and disregarding beauty in all of its infinite variety is a terrible squandering of the wonders we’ve been given.