Small Pleasures, Returning
Joy does not have to be loud to be real. I am allowed to notice the small ordinary things that are quietly coming back to me.
The sweetness in small moments has been arriving already half-spoiled — by anticipation of what might happen later, by the residue of what had happened the day before, by the sense that any small good thing could become something used against you in some later argument you had not yet had.
You can stop bracing now. The small good things can come back.
The first sip of coffee in the quiet kitchen. The song that arrives on a playlist and you remember why you used to love it. The walk on a cold morning when your breath shows in the air and you notice you are smiling without anyone asking you to. The bowl of soup eaten slowly, no one waiting for you to finish. The text from a friend that does not require you to manage anything in response.
These are not consolation prizes for the bigger joys you did not get to have. They are the actual joys. They were always the actual joys. The season you lived through trained you to discount them — to wait for some larger arrival, to suspect any pleasure that did not announce itself. That training was not true. What used to be bracing became the noticing of the bracing, which is becoming the small ordinary things returning — one by one — to their right place.
The small ordinary things are what a life is mostly made of. The mornings. The meals. The small turns of weather. The unspectacular afternoons. You are allowed to receive them. You are allowed to let them be sweet. You are allowed to notice how much steadier you are than you were a year ago, simply because more of these small ordinary things are landing in you and being kept.
Today, notice one of them. Just one. The light in a window. The warmth of a cup. The voice of someone who is glad to hear yours. Let it count. It counts.