An Appeal

In a time when it is increasingly difficult to pamper oneself with ornate luxuries, I feel that it is necessary to make an appeal to really try and appreciate the smaller joys in life. That is not to say that those smaller joys should ever be unappreciated, but it has become easier to notice them and there is nothing wrong with being a grateful person.

As I was walking home from the barber yesterday, I was really pleased with how they do a clean shave with a blade; that made me feel like a million bucks. I then started to think of other things that are kind of small, don’t happen too often, and should make me feel good:

• Getting someone to smile and/or cheer up after a bad day
• Taking the first bite into a perfectly-cooked and tender steak
• Walking outside just as the rain stops and the sun peeks out from behind clouds
• Singing along, with the rest of the crowd, to a favourite song while the band just plays
• Acing a quiz/test/exam while the rest of the class does poorly
• Turning a conversation around by complementing someone after he/she has been chastising me
• Licking the sauce from homemade ribs off my fingers
• Watching Jack Bauer go to town on bad guys after not seeing him for almost two years
• Driving with the window down on a cool, summer evening
• Tipping a server/driver particularly well
• Struggling to move the day after a hard workout (okay, this kind of sucks, too)
• Cradling a puppy in my hand
• Crossing the finish line of a cross-country race
• Raising a glass to toast with awesome friends that I haven’t seen in a long time
• Turning the last page of a great book
• Getting that “ah ha!” moment after being presented with a particularly difficult problem to solve
• Preserving parallelism in a list of little things that should make me feel good

Obviously, there are a lot more things but this is what I came up with off-hand. As I try to avoid taking the little things for granted, I implore you to do the same (if you haven’t or don’t already). Even though the times may be challenging, there is still a lot of happiness to be had in life and it’s easy to find if you’re looking for it.

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