There’s a great song by Sonny and Cher that has a line “it’s the little things that mean a lot,” and I completely agree.
Throughout each day, I find that there are almost always a million things that go wrong. I wake up with a crick in my neck, I didn’t get enough sleep, I have to study for that test that’s coming up. The list goes on and on. Despite all this, nine times out of 10, I go to bed thinking that I have had a pretty good day. I attribute this to a couple of things.
First off, I try to keep myself occupied. Whether it’s watching some Netflix or doing something productive, I try to fill up the day with activities. Second, I have a group of very supportive people in my life that is constantly reminding me that, despite how the world may look, it’s really a great place to be. Lastly, and most importantly for me most of the time, I find it very helpful to find joy in the small things. I have worked to systematically find little things in my day that make me smile, and over time, I have found that the majority of the things in my life make me feel like this.
Take for example some of my new kitchen equipment. I regularly watch episodes of “America’s Test Kitchen” online. The premise of the show is to systematically and objectively go through recipes and use the scientific method to make sure that they are completely foolproof. I take anything that they say regarding the kitchen as gospel. I’ve never been steered wrong by them.
I highly recommend the show to anyone who likes cooking. Apart from recipe testing, they also do equipment reviews, and when I was in the market for some new food storage containers. I went to them to see what they recommended. Well, I ended up purchasing their recommendation from Rubbermaid and I have been so happy with using them.
If you asked me in high school what I thought I would be getting excited about in college, I can guarantee that I would have never said “my new Tupperware,” but here we are.
The amount of satisfaction that I get out of reheating my food now actually kind of surprises me, but you know what? I don’t care if it’s kind of strange. If it makes me happy, I can’t see anything wrong with it.
Another recent acquisition of mine is an old Technics dual cassette deck from Salvation Army. I have always been obsessed with cassette tapes, but I have never had a decent deck to play and record anything on.
Now I have exactly what I’ve wanted for years, and considering it only cost me $10, I couldn’t be happier. Much to the shagrin of my roommate, I have been making mixtapes and recording full albums to the cassettes I bought nonstop for the past week. There is something about putting in a cassette tape into the deck and pressing play with a satisfying mechanical sound that just makes my day every time I do it.
I could go on for days talking about the small things in my day that improve it just a little bit, but the main thing I’m trying to get across is that even if you’re having a terrible day and nothing is going right, if you look for small things in your day that make you the slightest bit more happy, then they start to add up. Sure, everybody has their bad days.
Heck, the whole month of September kicked me to the ground and made sure I stayed there. That being said, if you look for the silver lining in anything, there is a good chance that you’re going to find it. All you have to do is look.
BENJAMIN HAYLETT
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