Small Important Things by Ula Bitinaitis

Small Important Things by Ula Bitinaitis

     I like appreciating the small details; the way my friends avoid stepping on the paw prints of cats in the snow, the nearby thud of a phone on the ground and the "aww!" that comes after, the dreamy sigh that comes after discussing "little things in life". I keep a Notes tab in my phone, dedicated to writing down the tiny things I notice, and I like how I scramble to jot them down when I notice something, because sometimes enjoying the world piece by piece is better than seeing the world as a whole. Stopping to smell a few roses as you trudge through life can be easier than appreciating the whole forest itself, where scarier things lurk that you might not want to think of. It may be rejecting criticism of the things you love, but roses can have thorns too.
     When I try and reach for anything bigger, I keep stumbling back to seemingly insignificant instances. So I'll write some more things; the graphite on the side of a person's hand after 40 minutes of non-stop writing, the puff of exhaustion that is released as they frantically discuss the answers and writing with confidence. I like dogged-ear pages of books or underlined sentences, showing the tracks of the previous owner and the writing that they loved, things that make digital PDFs lifeless. I like friends grabbing their shy friends' hands during dances, throwing them in the air to the beat of the music, and it's almost always followed by barrels of laughter that's almost always nicer than the music itself. I like the glint in someone's eye when they talk about the things that are important to them, and the way that their words overflow like a broken dam when they speak with such passion, with their smile growing bigger by the minute. I like overly warm classrooms, I like 3:00 AM rambles about life, I like when people show care when they don't mean to, and the small things I like are so important to me. I'm okay with thriving off of something small if it means I have something so discrete, yet so special.

Also, I think being wary of what's important to you is important, but maybe not as much.