In Praise of Small Quiet Things
I have always loved little things. A red ladybug crawling on a leaf. A small ceramic condiment dish tossed in a trash heap outside a pottery studio in Okinawa. The tiny animals that used to come in boxes of Red Rose Tea that sat together on my grandmother’s mantel. A pebble plucked from millions of others on a stony beach in coastal Maine.
Small, quiet things that you have to be present and in a slow frame of mind to notice. Things you can hold in your hand and study as you turn them around, noting all the delicate details. Items you can invite into your life without having to rent a storage unit to make room for them. Little treasures you can keep to yourself, or share with those who understand, or who are curious about the story.
I admire big things, of course. The Cologne Cathedral took my breath away when it greeted me at the top of the subway. I was unprepared and there it was, demanding “look at me, here I am!” Lots of things do that, demand attention, like gorgeous wood dining room tables in palatial homes, those same homes swallowing the land they are built on; the Lincoln Memorial, home to an enormous marble Abraham Lincoln looking out into the heart of DC.
These things are formidable, impressive, and they have their place. But they are not intimate, they don’t invite closeness or proximity. They are not what I seek in my daily life, or in my creativity.
Even in art, I like the small canvases, the little ceramics, the 5×7 prints that you can invite into your life without imposing on the things already in it. Small, beautiful things are usually more affordable, and I love the generosity of that, the expansion of art-filled lives.
It takes some effort to resist a culture that is forever suggesting that bigger is better. If one rose, Rolex, vacation home – you name it – is good, then two must be better, and twenty better still. But why?
Why chase after that larger home if I’m happy in the one I have? Why get a larger car just because I can? Why own more, why is bigger better, why take up more space? I’m not really the one who benefits when I begin wanting things I don’t truly want or need. My challenge is to stay myself. To notice when the culture and the algorithms and the frictionless invitations to consume are creating a hunger that wasn’t there before.
I want to remain a person who loves small quiet things, little joys, the handmade, the artisanal.
Because each little thing in my home is a tiny portkey into memory, connection, story. I chose this wave-smoothed rock because pink granite reminds me of Downeast Maine. I saved this bookmark because I am inspired by the block printing on it. This tiny silver container holds a piece of fur I cut from my long-deceased cat Chloe. This matchbox came from a restaurant that is still in business but no longer allows smoking.
And each tiny thing in the wild is an invitation to be present and observe how much life there is in the small and ordinary. A slow moving bee clinging to a dahlia petal in early morning when the sun is still low. The persistent weeds which grow between the stones of my little patio. Even the tiny green worms which threaten my roses are a reminder to look closer.
Yes part of me admires the visionaries who left us things like the pyramids in Egypt, the Great Wall in China, and the Taj Mahal. But I feel more deeply connected to the poet William Blake, who wrote:
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
I want to hold fast to my love of small things, remembering that smallness of scale does not mean smallness of experience.
