Big days and little moments

Someone told me one that life, when abstracted over a single lifetime, is just the lines connecting the dots of the big days: births, graduations, deaths, marriages, accidents, meetings, move-ins, move-outs, etc. No doubt this is helpful. And maybe that chronology might be what comes naturally when articulating one’s life.

But I would say that just as prevalent as the big days are the little moments: The little moments with loved ones on days you’ll never remember; the little moments with yourself when you realize something about yourself that seems so obvious once that little moment has passed. Even little moments with a person you dislike when you realize the banality of debauchery, evil, or aan alternative philosohpy.

These moments are so transient that one would be hard-pressed to map them out on a timeline like the big days, and would never account the ramifications of their life to any such ‘little moment’. But these come to define all else that the big days leave out: the curation of one’s psychology, philosophy, and pathologies.

Consider when you first contemplated mortality - or first reveled at nature’s purest beauty - or perhaps lost all essence and passage of time in a joke that was so funny you never remembered it. The little moments themselves are gone, but no doubt live within you as you plot your big days.

So have your big days, and enjoy or dread them as you should. But don’t dismiss the influence of all those little moments you barely or cannot remember.