The Comfort of Small Things

I don't know when I learned to take comfort in small things;  I think I must have been quite small myself at the time.  Call it a stratagem, a coping mechanism, or maybe a mental quirk - it's just something that has accompanied me through my life, and it has become my friend through many times of difficulty and sadness. 

In order to take comfort in something small, all you have to do is to focus your senses on that one small thing, and to allow yourself a moment to appreciate it.  In that moment of simple appreciation, stress and anxiety fold themselves back down to a manageable size, and a sense of the deep goodness of life wells up instead. 

Take the scent of apples as an example.  Many years ago when I was a university student I got the blues as students often will when faced with life away from home, money troubles, essay deadlines, and tangled love-lives.  I used to ride a bicycle to and from lectures, and I kept that bicycle in my landlady's shed, which happened to be the place where she also stored boxes of apples through the winter.  I used to cycle home each day with a doom-laden heart, push the bicycle into the shed, and then pause in the cobwebby gloom.  For just a moment I would consciously focus on the delicious scent of the apples, and slowly, strangely, the world would seem a friendlier place.

The world of nature may seem an obvious place to look for sources of comfort - who after all can fail to be captivated by the glittering dart of a dragonfly, moonlight on a lake, sunset in the desert?  My point is that these things are not necessarily easy to come by in our daily routine.  We do well to learn to see the normal beauty around us, and not only in those spectacular things that have the power to break into our thoughts and take them captive.  I've spent a lot of time in my garden this summer, and every day I have strolled through it admiring the obvious beauty of the flowers, and congratulating myself on the fruit of my labours.  One day, though, I stopped and lifted just one bloom on a towering spike of foxglove.  For a few moments I appreciated the intricate delicacy of the inner parts of the flower, seeing the speckles and striations that lead the bee to the pollen like runway lights.  In that moment I contend that I understood more about beauty than I had in a hundred half-distracted walks up the garden path.

Sometimes it's good to take a moment to appreciate things within ourselves.  I remember focusing a few years ago for just a moment on the snug feeling of my securely-fastened ankle-boots as I walked away from a sad graveside funeral service.  What made me aware of such a seemingly trivial thing?  I can't be sure, but I remember how my awareness of the comfortable feeling around my ankle spread into a more general awareness of the fact that no part of my body was in pain.  Not only did that moment of awareness fill me with a sense of life's goodness, but it also comforts me today in some strange way, now that rheumatoid arthritis means that being pain-free really is just a memory.  I'm pleased to think that I took the time to be glad about my wellness while I had it, just for a moment.

Medieval mystic Mother Julian of Norwich was way ahead of me, of course.  She meditated on a hazelnut, and understood the littleness and fragility of the whole world cradled in God's hand.  Taking comfort in small things means understanding our own littleness, and at the same time it means understanding the importance of little things.  It means getting a right perspective on life. 

And in the words of Mother Julian, "All shall be well."

Sandie McVeigh

Comments

[Galina]

That's beautiful. I know what you mean about the comfort of small things - ordinary things.

Sometimes, certain things, sights, melodies, or smells just... sneak up on me and ... not to sound too cliche, it's as if they transcend time, and become eternal.

Sometimes it is the experiences I create for myself. But many times, it is the simplest and most unexpected things that really stand out from the ordinariness of life.

I have fond memories of the strangest and simplest things....