Why the Little Moments Matter

Hello and welcome back to Diary of a Small-Town Girl! I’m so glad you’re here. This week’s post is a little bit different from many of my other posts, but I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot recently and couldn’t get it out of my head: why the little moments matter.

Honestly, I can’t even explain why this idea has latched itself so firmly in my head, but it has. With the new year, society turns to focus on making this year “the best one yet”, or on saying “this is my year”. This year, more than in years past, I’ve noticed a lot of discussion around happiness and gratitude.

As a result, I’ve been thinking about them a lot, in all the different ways that the articles and blogs that I’ve read talk about it. As I’ve been thinking and reading about gratitude and happiness, I’ve been considering the things that make me happy. And the things that I kept coming back to, were the little things. All the little routines, events, and moments.

And most of those moments are, seemingly, ordinary.

Getting coffee with a friend on a Friday afternoon. Playing frisbee on the quad while avoiding doing homework. Laying on the floor and listening to Taylor Swift. Sitting at dinner for hours. Accidentally running into a Christmas tree lighting while trying to find the bus stop. Card games with my family at Christmas. Walking my dog early in the morning. Drinking hot chocolate in a friend’s dorm. Journaling before bed. Taking Buzzfeed quizzes on a Sunday night while on the phone with a friend from home. Getting dinner at my favorite local restaurant with my parents. Playing my violin for the first time in a few months. Baking brownies on a snow day. Someone complimenting me on my earrings or shirt. Sitting in the sun on one of the last warm days of the season. Peoplewatching at the airport.

I could go on and on. I could write about a thousand of these moments and 99% of them would be tiny things that we sometimes forget to even notice. I’m sure there would be plenty I’d forget.

My point is, yes, the big things bring us happiness and gratitude. There are so many big things that I could tell you about. But the big things aren’t everyday things. And while that makes them more meaningful, we cannot move from one big thing to the next, always waiting for something new and exciting.

I think, to find happiness, we have to find joy in the little moments. The everyday things that are more extraordinary than we think. Because they are extraordinary. And once you start noticing these little moments, you’ll keep noticing them. They’re the things that we might not even think twice about, like a friend yelling hello from across the quad, or your siblings showing that they will actually miss you through a cheap toy car you win at the arcade.

These moments are everywhere, if you care to look for them. While I find joy and gratitude in the big moments, and I will never take them for granted, this year, I also want to focus on not taking the little moments for granted. We so often miss these things, getting caught up in daily life.

And if we never notice these little moments, we lose so many incredible things. The little moments are the ones that make every day worth living. They are where we find the love and beauty in the world, especially when everything going on seems too overwhelming. They’re where you make friendships and where we find love, for ourselves and for others. They are where we realize just how lucky we are.

So, why do the little moments matter? Because the little moments are the big moments.

They are the moments that make up our lives, more than we can ever realize. So, today, or whenever you’re reading this, let’s try to look for the little moments just a little bit more. Because the little moments matter. And they’re where we can find so many beautiful, incredible, perfect things.