Learning to Live a Life of Fulfilment
A guide to appreciating the small things in life and finding joy in every moment.
Decades ago in a Parisian square, French author, Georges Perec, sat with pen and paper and wrote what he saw.
He described everything — the people, the buses, the urban landscape. “10:01, Bus 57 passes; 10:03, dog, Labrador, walks by, owner close behind”. A few minutes later: “Bus 57 passes, again”.
To the average person, such small details mean nothing; we don’t care about how many times the buses pass, or about the dog walkers, coming to and fro. These facts of our existence, fading into the quiet chaos of daily life, tend to go unnoticed.
But Perec, in his painstaking observations and scientific precision, was making a larger point.
Noticing the Small Things
In an essay entitled the “Infra-Ordinary”, he calls these natural tendencies into question.
“What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event”
Headlines, scandals, and natural disasters are what draw our attention. We only consider the ordinary details of life when something extraordinary occurs.
We only care about planes when they crash, about buses when they don’t arrive on time, or about our local shop when it runs out of our favourite coffee. Newspapers only tell us of the latest political story or the newest hint of social unrest — never of anything that is completely, and fundamentally, simple.
But where is the real scandal? Perec asks us. Is it truly the plane that crashes or the latest political affair?
To some extent, yes. Of course these grand events deserve our attention. But the real human scandal, he says, is that we have trained ourselves to ignore the smaller, less-grand events — the unnoticed aspects of daily life, which, however small they may be, make our life what it is.
“We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us”, he notes.
We live in a world with more data than ever, and a vastly greater flow of observable things: a GPS can survey hundreds of miles of territory, and microscopes can glimpse the smallest of cells. Cameras can capture a random moment and preserve it forever.
But in this world of hyperacuity, are we really seeing anything at all?
Do we see the mother of five who makes the same morning commute as us, the cleaner at work who empties our bins at night, or the barista who pours our four o’clock latte?
Do we appreciate the taste of a homemade meal, or do we rush to finish it and satiate our hunger?
Stop and Smell the Roses
Learning to notice the small things in life, opening our eyes to what is in front of us, is not a new piece of advice.
Smell a rose, enjoy the sunset, appreciate time well-spent with family — we’ve all heard those exhortations before — so often, indeed, that they pass without effect.
How, then, is one supposed to learn how to notice something? Doesn’t it have to have some splendour, some éclat, some sensationalism in order to register? How is one to make the things that don’t stand out that way actually stand out?
In this case, the how leads to the who — and the who is me.
If I am the one who is engaged only with what is sensational, then I have to overcome that habit. I have to put aside that preference. I must modify myself in order to see what was already there, subliminal and quiet, in a different way.
I have to let it speak to me, to manifest itself as what it is, whatever that may be.
I have to let it question me. ‘Do you see that I am here’? And I must be willing to entertain the response. It’s about modifying oneself to be a listener to the world and to entertain new vantage points.
Consider your morning coffee. Consider the soft material of your pockets.
Perec suggests,
“Make an inventory of [them]. Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out”.
Good questions — but who among us pauses to ask them?
“Consider your tea spoons”, he continues. How spoon-like they are! What an extraordinary thing it is to be spoon-like…
It’s almost like being a child. The fresh discovery of spoonhood, that which we have long forgotten.
In Summary
Perhaps the way out of the clutter — of too many things — is to allow ourselves to see these things. An event. A moment. To have an experience as an experience, simply and completely.
The endless flow of irrelevancies may then yield to the contemplation of ordinary things.
Question them, and you may discover beauty that you hadn’t anticipated.
‘I hope you find, as I did, that happiness comes from noticing and enjoying the little things in life.’ — Barbara Ann Kipfer
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