Noticing the Little, Beautiful Things
City lights at sunset or Springtime's blooming trees can remind us that there is more beyond the all-consuming moment.
Yesterday, after a week of valiantly struggling with my brain to be productive, I gave up the fight and went for a long walk in search of inspiration for my next Substack.
As I started down the hill toward the Marina Green, trying to clear the clutter in my mind, I found I kept stopping in my tracks and doubling back to take closer looks—there is an absolute bounty of blooming flowers in San Francisco right now.
As I grinned at the magnolias overhead, my mind felt lighter, less busy.
It occurred to me that noticing the little, beautiful things has always been my tried-and-true way to reconnect with myself and my focus. I had honed this habit (coping mechanism?) in the first chapter of my life in San Francisco.
Somewhere between 2016 and 2017, after I’d just moved to San Francisco and before I’d found my way into a day job in music, I found myself working downtown at a website design agency.
I say “I found myself” because I was there by the grace of a recruiter and the need for more money than my café job was providing, rather than any interest in the subject matter (though if you’re reading this and you either placed me there or hired me, I’m still grateful!!).
I’d order food for the office (inevitably I would miss something or order the wrong brand of some condiment), fluff pillows (I am grateful I do now know how to fluff a pillow), and plan activities I knew no one in the office would attend (except one Art Director - “reader, I married him”*). Overall, I felt very out of place, though hopefully all anyone saw was the cheerful little office manager they had hired.
My life in those days became a cycle worthy of a movie montage; commute to work, tolerate work, commute home from work.
This was just after La La Land had come out, a movie and soundtrack whose dreamer-centric themes had touched me deeply. I developed a habit of starting the first song on the soundtrack when I’d get on the bus in the morning (song one was the bouncy “Another Day of Sun”, with its ‘leaving home to pursue my dreams’ energy), listening to it ‘til I got to work, then starting it up again as I’d leave the office to head home (by that point, the album was deeply bittersweet - I remember trying not to cry while staring out the bus window, mournfully listening to “City of Stars”). The commute time ended up being about the entirety of the album start to finish, door to door, and this must have gone on for months.
I clung to that music and it carried me through that period gently. It reminded me that I wasn’t the first person to feel lost after leaving home chasing something; with that piano in my ears, the juxtaposition of that energizing newness, being in the ‘big city’, with moments of feeling like I was absolutely, dejectedly out of place and lost, was suddenly something I could share with every stranger who would smile at me.
And as I’d gaze up at the warm city lights against the darkening, navy sky, I could find the romance in the ache. I could see the art in the way a restaurant had set a window-seat table, or a particularly lovely cloud.
I could notice that life continued, and as such, mine would as well. I wouldn’t be stuck in the cycle forever.
My day to day looks quite different now than it did eight years ago, but the little, beautiful things are just as useful.
This week, I’m fighting with my brain on the topic of initiating work tasks.
None of my projects currently have deadlines breathing down my neck so of course, I seem incapable of deciding which one to begin. It probably has something to do with the emotional exhaustion of a particularly busy last two weeks prepping for gigs, squeezing in work between feverish practicing, but even explained, it’s still annoying and inconvenient. After realizing checking my email again wouldn’t help, I stopped fighting it.
So, back to the walk.
A chill wind was making it gloriously clear, and I zig-zagged across the streets chasing the sunny side downhill to the Marina Green. Every few steps was a new tree; those pinky-white magnolias, some deep purple flowers tucked away in a bush that I didn’t recognize, and gorgeous lavender blue, foot-high sprigs down by Fort Mason with tiny yellow buds at their base. I stopped to peek closer at them all, grinning widely.
When I made it to the water’s edge, the first deep sharp breath of sea air knocked any tension right out of me. I stayed for a while watching a seal lolling around the shallows, a fishing bird popping up and confidently paddling by, feathers slick. I gulped that air until I could feel it in my limbs and made myself dizzy.
As I made it back up the hill to my computer, lo and behold, I could think! And to make matters better, I was still smiling!
As I mulled over what to write about, it occurred to me that perhaps that was it. But why were these little joys so vital for me?
It occurred to me that the little, beautiful things are lifelines because they give us perspective.
When we’re looking up and around us, noticing those slivers of beauty, we’re subconsciously being reminded that there’s life outside of whatever the all-consuming struggle of the moment may be.
The key here as well is to remember to look up - it occurs to me that my pathological listening to La La Land was my way to make sure I did, and to color the things I saw with meaning that felt hard to make myself at the time. Today, when it’s not so hard, I don’t need the crutch.
The little, beautiful things remind us that the world is turning, the weather is changing, and nature continues along its cycles; of the fact that we’re just one thread in a web of many lives, both human and other-than-human, around us. And big or small, whatever is overwhelming us, there’s more beyond it.
So the next time I’m frustrated and I can’t decide which project to work on that hour, I’ll remember the best remedy will be to get myself outside and to notice.
*Jane Eyre reference, anyone?
So very true! Nothing like nature to ground us all again. Always take time to “stop and smell the roses!” 😍