A Reflection On The Little Things
The post below is from Sahil Bloom, and it hit home with me because, as many of you know, I am 71 and I finally realize how critically important the "little things" and little moments are to a rich life. It is true not just in our relationships with our loved ones and colleagues, but also in our relationship to the natural world and its staggering beauty, and in finding meaning in our work. To notice the little things slows one down, it lights up the joy of being alive, and it angles you into a small mental parking space where you can drop the mayhem and savor a moment and a little experience.
The truth of John Wooden's quote is true not just for building a winning basketball team, but for nearly everything in life, including our relationships. By noticing the little things about a loved one, not the little things we don't like or that we think are wrong, but the little things we like or that strike us, because the accretion of little things noticed over time will build a mountain of connection and trust.
But, you have to do the noticing, of the little things, again and again. It's like dollar cost averaging. A little deposit regularly builds relationship wealth.
Here is Sahil's post reproduced entirely:
You're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die.
In 2021, that simple statement, which later became the opening line of my book, changed my life.
My wife and I were living in California at the time, 3,000 miles away from our parents. I had been there for 12 years––a college baseball scholarship had brought me out West, and then a lucrative job opportunity had kept me there.
In a lot of ways, that felt fine.
Growing up, if you're fortunate enough to have healthy parents, your default assumption is that they're immortal. Obviously, you know they're not, but the idea of mortality becomes a conceptual or intellectual one, not a visceral reality you've really contemplated.
As you get older, you realize: The answers you seek in life are found in the questions you avoid.
When I was confronted with that simple math––of the number of moments I had remaining with my parents––it forced me to confront one of those questions I had been avoiding.
What were my real priorities? And were my actions aligned with those priorities?
You see, there are two types of priorities in life:
- The priorities we say we have; and
- The priorities our actions show we have.
And often there's a big gap between the two. I know. I was living it.
Your life improves alongside your ability to close that gap. But you can't close it until you acknowledge that it exists in the first place.
I saw the gap and knew that if something didn't change, we were going to end up with a life we never wanted.
So, within 45 days, my wife and I took a dramatic action. We uprooted our life in California and moved back East with the goal of living within driving distance of both sets of parents and my sister, who were all in Boston.
My wife's job agreed to move her to the NYC office––and with my decision to take a leap of faith into pursuing writing and entrepreneurship, the suburbs outside the city seemed like a good interim landing spot.
It wasn't perfect––around three hours from Boston––but we made it work.
We were blessed with our son, Roman, in 2022. My wife took a step back from her career to focus on being a mom. My new path was bringing me energy and opportunities I never imagined. And we were spending time with our parents multiple times per month, albeit with someone driving a long way to do so.
For the first time in over a decade, life felt like it was in flow.
But somewhere along the way, that changed...
When you're young, you grow accustomed to focusing on the big things in life. The celebrations. The birthdays. The weddings. The events. The weekend escapes.
One way I think about this youthful mindset is that the meaning you derive from any given activity is effectively proportional to the scale of your investment in it.
I noticed that every single time we were seeing our families, it had, by virtue of the long drive investment required, been for something big. We couldn't casually get together on a Tuesday evening for a walk, so we got together for the birthdays, the long weekends, the anniversaries, and the holidays instead.
And we slowly, silently, slipped into a life focused on the big.
Author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote:
"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things."
I think the first time I really noticed it was this spring. My parents decided to drop by our house on their way home from a weekend visiting their dear friends in the area.
It was one of those perfect spring evenings. The smell. The sounds. Everything.
I had cooked dinner for all of us. Laughter and conversation flowed.
When dinner ended, I found myself sitting alone, sipping a glass of wine, watching as my son chased my parents around the backyard.
The joy on his face only surpassed by the beaming smiles on theirs.
In that moment, I had a realization:
This was it. It wasn't big or glamorous.
It was a little thing that meant everything.
A few weeks later, we drove to Boston for my wife's grandmother's funeral. After the service, we loaded ourselves back into the car for the three hour drive home.
There's something about death that brings extraordinary clarity to life. In that moment, my wife and I locked eyes and uttered the same striking thought:
We should move to Boston.
To be there for the big, but more importantly, for the little.
I want to be able to go for a walk with my dad to get his thoughts on a challenge I'm facing. I want to be able to take my sister out for a coffee. I want to be able to grab lunch on a Tuesday with my mom, just because. I want to be able to see my son play dinosaurs with all of his grandparents on a Wednesday morning.
None of that is big. But that's ok. Because the real texture of life, the real meaning of life, is found in the little.
We live in an era where authenticity is at an all time low. Many of the people we see talking about a thing don't actually live by it. I refuse to be a part of that trend. If I'm going to talk about it, I'm going to be about it. I want you to be able to trust that I live by the words I write and speak.
So, this week, just a few short months later, we did it. We packed our life into two moving trucks, sold our house, and hit the road for the drive to Boston, one last time.
After 20 years of being spread out across the country––of being forced into a focus on the big––my entire family is going to live in the same area again.
A new adventure. A whole new world. Little things that become big things.
I'll end with a quick story...
A few weeks ago, I drove my son to run an errand at the grocery store before heading to my in-laws' house for dinner.
He asked where we were going. I said, "Home."
He looked at me, confused, "Why do you call it home? That's not home, that's Mimi's house."
My response:
"Home is wherever there are people you love."
He smiled, satisfied, and just said, "Oh!"
So, here's the truth:
We're moving home. And I couldn't be happier about it.
