What ordinary, everyday joy will you savour today?
Green tea was my Eureka moment.
You probably won’t remember much of today. Not unless something different or big or extraordinary happens.
And you know what, that’s okay. That’s how the human mind is designed. Even though our brains have approximately 2.5 million gigabytes of digital memory, we can’t possibly remember every single day. That’s why we filter stuff out and only remember significant events, good or bad memories, and anything else that has a profound impact on our life.
New year, new recaps
Humans have been recording history for a very long time. Whether it’s our limited brain capacity or our desire to pass on what we’ve learned to future generations, we’ve always liked looking back at our past and noting the important things down.
New years are a notorious time for such history-keepers. But, to be fair, another successful revolution around the sun where an asteroid didn’t crash into us or we didn’t have another Carrington Event should definitely be celebrated.
But here’s the thing, all our 2021 recaps and highlight reels only talk about our big successes or failures. Logically, that makes sense — no one wants to read about the hours you sat at your desk going through emails or hear about the bazillion cups of coffee you had throughout the year.
While part of our life, all that stuff isn’t interesting enough to write about. In fact, when I did my yearly recaps on my blog, I enjoyed the process of looking over the past year, going over each month to see what I’d done, the things I’d accomplished or failed at, and the progress I’d made.
I didn’t do one in 2020 because I had nothing to write. Jan-March would’ve been fine to write about. What about after? I’d just have to talk about how I spent the other nine months of 2020 working from home, playing Among Us and Catan online, and zooming with friends because we couldn’t meet anyone in person for months on end.
But that’s the thing. Sitting at home for two years, unable to travel or make “great memories,” I realized how much I value my everyday joys.
“You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.” - Mitch Albom.
The mundane and the quotidian part of my life may not make for good reading, but I’ve come to cherish some1 of these moments with a quiet fondness because they represent a different, more subtle kind of progress.
The moment I knew
It took a simple bath for our boy Archimedes to figure out how displacement works. It took Newton being bonked on the head by a falling apple to discover gravity. It took the absence of her partner at her 21st birthday celebrations for Taylor Swift to realize that this relationship probably wouldn’t work out. It took Amy grumbling over a crossword puzzle clue for Jake to know he wanted to marry her.
All this to say — most of our biggest epiphanies happen during small, quiet moments. Moments that go unnoticed and unappreciated until we can’t experience them anymore.
Whether it’s being able to live with your siblings and annoy them every other second or being able to go into the office and pass the time chit-chatting with your coworkers — these moments don’t make it to our yearly highlights, but they make up our year just as much, if not more.
What then was the moment that triggered my current epiphany about ordinary moments?
Green tea.
That’s what.
On new year’s night, I asked my friends if they wanted some green tea. We were all having our regular drinks, toasting to the new year, begging for it to go back to normal, or whatever normal was now.
They said yes. And we all drank green tea and honey, and I have no idea why I loved that moment so much, but I did. It made me think about how lucky I am to have my closest friends near me and how that might not be true for very much longer. It made me realize that we have to appreciate the small moments. The grocery runs, the walks we take to convince ourselves is enough exercise, the chaotic zoom calls — all of it.
“I had two pastries, Mussolini no longer has power”
I wondered how my individual experience of having green tea could overshadow a whole new year. But we’ve been doing this for years. Because humans are self-obsessed and have a desire to prioritize their everyday joys over larger, global-level successes.
That diary entry makes me realize that the day we got the first picture of a black hole, I was simply scrolling Twitter.
It’s not just teens either. Go and ask anyone who keeps a daily diary.
One of my friends has written every day religiously for the last decade. I bet if she read one of her days out loud, she’d tell us about the autumn leaves she picked up to use as bookmarks or the delicious food her new friends in Strasbourg cooked for her. I don’t think she’s mentioned when Trump became President (she definitely waxed poetic about the exams we had that same month) or when he got banned from Twitter (I think she wrote about hiking in The Black Forest then).
While I love making great memories through travels or events, I think we should all take a moment to appreciate how far we’ve come in the small ways too. This is in no way me telling you to cherish and appreciate all your cups of chai or the hours you’re spending breaking your head over excel. Every moment isn’t worth celebrating. That’s okay. You don’t have to develop a miraculous way of looking at life or starting loving everything like you’re at the end of Eat, Pray Love.
What I want to say is be more open to celebrating small moments just as much as the big ones. These tiny victories and everyday joys can help put the incredible expanse of life in a better perspective.
Happy new year friends! ✨ I can’t keep track of time — I spent all of Monday thinking it was the 9th so that’s why I’m a day behind on pretty much everything. And I’m still writing 20212 everywhere, smh.
Share an ordinary highlight of your 2021 and tell me what you thought of this issue?
P.S. It’s anonymous!
The first of 2022 faves! 💌
Everyone and their mother are playing Wordle. If you're into super quick and interesting word games, you might also like it. But while the game is cool, what caught my attention was the reason behind its creation — love.
While I know that playing Wordle once a day is part of what makes it so fun, Katherine Peterson on Twitter made an open-source version that lets you play multiple times a day. Check it out here.
What if your wish for a productive year was slightly misunderstood by a genie granting wishes?
That new Harry Potter Reunion Special doing the rounds? Polygon explores how it's less about nostalgia but more about rebranding and moving away from Rowling's horrible TERF views. No shade to anyone who has watched it because loving flawed creations or work by flawed creators is understandable — you just have to acknowledge the shortcomings and problematic aspects.
Anyone else still struggling to figure out time? Didn't 2021 end in a blink? I'm still tying together a lot of loose ends, and if you're like me, an annual review might be helpful for reflections and changes in 2022. Here's how to complete your annual review (think of it like a recap!), and here's a useful free booklet by YearCompass that can help you close out 2021 and plan out 2022.
Finally, it may well be 12 days into 2022, but remember not to put too much pressure on yourself to immediately transform into a new human being.
Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to like this post by pressing the heart if you enjoyed it — it helps more readers find my work. ❤️
See you next week!
I say some because I will never cherish washing dishes. Never.