I was just working on the second paragraph of this post when I went to press “save draft” and for some reason the action failed and everything went blank ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh don’t you just hate it when that happens? Sigh. I can’t replicate everything I did before! It was a masterpiece! A spur of the moment inspiration! (I’m just trying to lower expectations here so you do come out of this reading rather satisfied). Anyway, here we go again.

Life is life because of the little things. It’s not that amazing work of art you saw or the event you were looking forward to all week. It’s about the little quirky moments that sneak up on you and for some reason make you laugh. It’s listening to a song you love, it’s singing off tune and mumbling the lyrics loudly in the car with your friends, it’s those classic tunes (hmm spice girls….), it’s reenacting the scenes from your favorite TV shows and doing the voices from the characters in Disney pixar’s movies. It’s having a laughing fit in the middle of a public place with you friend. It’s going to your favorite chain-sandwich restaurant (Cosiii! Love). It’s going up the stairs and catching a glimpse of the sky, beautifully framed just for you, just in that moment.

Maybe it’s because these moments don’t involve expectation. They are pleasant surprises that spur out of nowhere to say hello. You don’t wake up thinking “oh I’m really looking forward to the sunset today”. You just appreciate a great one when you see it. And you know it’s great because it was able to catch your attention and take you out of your world just from how beautiful it was. And just those 2 minutes watching something as simple as the different hues of the orange and blue along the horizon can change your whole being.

I had a little something like that happen to me this week. It was a Thursday, and I was definitely looking forward to the week being over. I had a very busy weekend and didn’t really have time to re-energize for the week, so I was ready for some serious resting time. I was heading back from lunch with a friend (you all know her by now, it’s Muna) and I was on schedule to get done all of the nitty-gritty things I had to do in that moment. Suddenly, I was stopped by Muna who deeply groaned at the sight of all of the leaves that were collected from campus piled up and ready to be sucked away by a machine. She was so sad because she is particularly keen on jumping on the leaves in the Fall. This is her “simple thing” that makes her oh, so happy. But I told her: you can still jump! Do it now! An after some convincing, she agreed. She wanted me to go with her, but I strongly said no. I don’t do jumping-on-leaves. But then, at this thought, at this silly thought, this old thought, this thought of not wanting to mess up my coat or be covered in leaves, I realized how stupid I was being. Here I was in front of this beautiful pile of leaves waiting to cushion someone with their amazing fluffly characteristics and I wasn’t going to jump?! Heck no! I whipped my head around to Muna and said: “I wanna do it! Let’s jump!”

So I placed my backpack on the floor, stepped up to the pile of leaves, turned around, opened my arms wide to the side in a Rose-in-the-Titanic kind of way, and I let go.

:), Luci