Top 10 of Life’s Teeniest Pleasures

I’m not talking sunset on a Mexican beach.  I’m not talking finding vintage Vuitton at the local Salvation Army.  I’m not even talking having 10% taken off your bill because you had to wait a few extra minutes for your food.  Because while all of those things are indeed some of life’s wonderful little pleasures, they are not teeny.

This is a list of pleasures so small, they are hardly a step above ordinary.  They are things that can and do happen every day, yet never fail to add even just a little sparkle to the moment; the natural sweetness in the cherry on the icing on the cake, if you will.

So, without further ado……..

1. Coffee. I swear that coffee contains some magical property that has the ability to make even the worst of days even the smallest bit better.  Whether I have a problem that I just cant sort out, a day in which I cant find any good, I can however have a cup of coffee.  It’s a sort of small thing I can make for myself almost any time; I can share a cup with a friend or acquaintance, or relax with a steaming mug of it by myself.  Even that sound – when it starts percolating – makes me happy.

2. Looking really close at flowers. I am not a gardener, and I can identify just a handful of types of flowers.  But I love looking at them.  The detail on each bud is stunning – stripes and dots, tiny hairs, intricate patterns, and of these teeny tiny details is duplicated on flowers of the same species.  I know some of you probably disagree with me, but if this much detail is found on each of the millions of flowers there are, how can anyone even imagine that it all came about randomly?  No my friends, I look at even one little flower, and can only conclude that it was intelligently designed.

3. Getting complimented by a stranger. It seems to me that when somebody random bothers to come up to me an tell me I’ve got a great bag, or scarf, or whatever, it must be or look really good. Friends are unspokenly required to toss out a compliment or two on a regular basis, so when it comes from a stranger, it feels just a little bit better.  Little ego boosts like that can brighten up my entire day.

4. Writing with a freshly sharpened pencil. Working at the school, I still do a fair amount of pencil-writing.  And believe you me, there is very little in the way of note-writing that compares to putting a newly sharpened HB to a sheet of loose leaf.  The letters are so crisp!  You don’t even have to push very hard to get a nice dark line.  I keep staring at at second-from-the-right pencil, wishing I could pull it from the screen and print something!  But, I digress.

5. Putting together a sentence or paragraph that you know is good. I guess this is on my list because I like to fancy myself a writer, and it is just so satisfying putting words together that just go. I remember the first time I ever felt like that about writing.  I was in grade 11 and wrote these lines as part of a poem about time for a class assignment:

A fistful of sand:
The tighter your grasp
The faster it falls,
The harder it lands

Then when all’s said and done
What’s left of our plans?
But the traces of dust
Time leaves in our hands.

6. Cracking my knuckles. I can’t even explain why I find this pleasurable – it’s not like anything feels wrong in my knuckles before I crack them.  But the feeling in my knuckles somehow improves drastically after the cracking occurs, and it makes such a satisfying pop! as it happens.  I can even occasionally crack my wrists, which is even better than knuckle-cracking.

7. Finding a shirt I haven’t seen in weeks because it was wedged in between the wall and my bed. Yeah, it’s great – and usually happens by accident while I’m frantically searching for something else.  Usually said shirt is then incorporated into the next day’s outfit because it hasn’t been worn in goodness knows how long, and kind of feels like a new piece of clothing.  Oh, what?  None of you can relate to this one because you actually tidy your rooms on a regular basis?

8. Finding something delicious (read: dessert!) in the back of your freezer. I don’t know about you, but I have found my freezer extremely difficult to keep organized, so I figured I’d spare myself and just quit trying.  No, this picture is not of my own freezer at home.  Sometimes, when somebody makes an extra-big dessert, it becomes inhumanly possible to finish it before the mold sets in.  And it is never, I repeat never okay to let dessert go to waste, so we package it up and put it in the freezer, to pull it out when the moment is right.  Trouble is, that freshly Tupperwared fudge brownie now looks like every other nondescript package in the ol’ ice box, and is quickly forgotten.  However, there will come a day when there is nothing in my house to eat, so I invariably turn to the freezer, hoping to find leftovers or something as easy to prepare.  And just when I am resigning myself to a lousy supper – hello fudge brownie!  The promise of fudge brownie dessert can make any lousy supper manageable.

9. The feeling on my skin when the sun comes back out after being behind a cloud. A slight chill to instant warmth spreading all over you.  Lovely.

10. Straightening stacks of miscellaneous paper. This is another one of those things I find inexplicably satisfying.  It is the appearance of organization without the necessity of being organized.  As long as the corners are lined up and square, all is more or less right in the world, the world on my desk at any rate.

What are some of your favorite of life’s teeniest pleasures?