The Little Things

The other day I read an interesting opinion piece in USA Today suggesting that the current epidemic of depression in America (suicide rates have increased dramatically over the past 20 years) is largely caused by our culture’s overemphasis on personal accomplishment. Our emotional suffering, the writer said, is “a rational response to a culture that values people based on ever escalating financial and personal achievements.” She went on: “We should stop telling people who yearn for a deeper meaning in life that they have an illness or need therapy. Instead, we need to help people craft lives that are more meaningful and built on a firmer foundation than personal success.”

I thought she was right on the money.

But if meaning doesn’t come from personal achievement or self perfection, where does it come from? Where can it be found?

When I was young, I used to believe I needed to create meaning by doing something great with my life, by having a big career, by becoming somebody important. But now I know I was wrong. I was way off. I don’t need to do anything dazzling to be happy. I don’t need to create meaning—because the meaning is already there, in every little thing, in every little moment, and it always has been, since the beginning. I just needed to stop fretting and striving long enough to see it, to appreciate it.

For me, it’s easiest to find meaning in the little daily things, the things I do before and after my office job—feeding my cats, watering my plants, sweeping the front porch, buttering toast for my husband. . . . If I’m mindful, if I’m really there in the now, not worrying about the past or the future, these little chores can be very pleasant and sweet. The little tasks of caretaking can take us quicker than anything else, I think, to the heart of what it means to be human.

I love Michael Pollan’s Netflix series Cooked, especially the “Water” episode, when Samin Nosrat, a young chef, says (in so many words), “We often think that doing little things like peeling and chopping vegetables is getting in the way of life. But I think we’re mistaken. This is life.”

When I was young, I was really ambitious, but in a negative way. I thought I didn’t deserve to be loved unless I made the best grades, got into the best college, landed the most prestigious job. I worked so hard, but my work ethic came from a dark, sad place. I was driven by insecurity and fear of failure, not by love of what I was doing.

I’d always heard that we’re all children of God, that God loves us all equally. The words went in one ear and out the other—for a long time. But then one day, quite late in my life, they actually began to sink in. What a surprise! One day I actually began to believe them. And that changed everything. I began to live completely differently, to work because I wanted to be helpful, not because I thought I had to prove my worth.

I still work hard, but I also take a bit of time now to enjoy the world and my existence in it. These days, my favorite kind of Sunday afternoon is one spent petting my cats or sitting on the breezeway to watch the cardinals in their nest in the lime tree.

When I look back, the best times, for me, haven’t been the big times—big accomplishments, big adventures. No, they’ve been the small times. Like when I feed watermelon to the box turtles in my yard in summer. Or when I stop and eat ripe mulberries from the tree that hangs over the parking lot at work. Or when I’m taking out the trash at night and I remember to look up at the stars and the moon and the midnight-blue sky.

The best times are whenever I pause to realize that creation is beautiful and amazing and that I’m a part of it.