Simple Pleasures

While going through life, I've found it all too easy to get wrapped up in the grander plans and schemes that seem to dominate the background of my mind. To be clear, that's not a bad thing. Having the big picture always on your mind is absolutely crucial if you ever want to get there, but what often gets either overlooked or underappreciated are the little things that help you get there. "It's the little things that count" is an expression often attributed to things of seemingly no apparent value that hold greater significance than one would first assume. This expression is often used in the context of relationships, romantic or otherwise, but that's not what I'm talking about here. It's simple pleasures in our day to day lives that really hold us all together. Stupid jokes you tell with your friends, that first cup of coffee in the morning, talking a walk after work. These things seem so insignificant, but without them, we'd lose our sanity. I think the reason for this is that people aren't designed to function for a specific purpose 100% of the time. Sometimes we just need to take a step back and focus on something small to keep us grounded, and that's so much more powerful than most realize. I've always been amazed by the fact that during some of the most trying times in my life, it was the smallest gestures or activities that got me through them. Even today, I can see or go through something that shakes me to my core but if I take a moment to focus on some meaningless task, it keeps me grounded. When my grandfather died, it was a horrible experience that deeply effected me. He was one of the first people in my life who convinced me that I mattered by the way he always did everything he could to be a part of my life and guide me in any way he possibly could. He was something of a father figure to me and to find out that this extremely significant figure in my life was just suddenly gone was almost unbearable. But like with many other hardships, I was able to hold myself together largely by simply picking up my guitar and plucking away from time to time. If you simply saw the activity that I was taking part in, you wouldn't think anything of it. You wouldn't say this is a man who is performing the act of maintaining his sanity, he's just playing an instrument, but that's what was happening and still happens to this day. Everyone has things like that, whether it be drawing, writing, looking at stupid jokes on the internet, or spending time with their pets. These are activities that everyone takes part in every single day without a second thought and are infinitely more significant than some might understand. Life can be terrible, it can be trying, and it has proven itself far too much for countless individuals. We will encounter hardships until the day we die, and we can't control that, but we can control how we cope. Simple pleasures are just that; a coping mechanism for the monotony and misery of every day life. But then again, they aren't just that. Simple pleasures start out as that, but often they change from someone's means of coping with life, into how they dominate and make life their own. There are few things in this world that I enjoy more than seeing someone change their hobby into their career, but it's no less beautiful when someone has something in their lives that's personal to them and still brings them happiness. You don't have to share your simple pleasures with the world, you don't even have to be good at them. You can completely suck at something but if it makes you happy, then you should never stop because life is far too short to let others keep you from doing something you love just because it doesn't live up to their standards. But simple pleasures aren't just hobbies, like I said before, they can be anything. As long as it makes you happy and keeps you grounded, I believe it qualifies as a crucial step towards accomplishing the greater goal of growing as a person and finding what you wish to do and be in the world.