Why Small Good Things? Why Not Big Bad Things?

I was raised Quaker, a small subset of Christianity home to pacifists and people who thrive on potlucks and indecision. And while I no longer am Quaker, I did absorb one of its core tenets: there is light in (mostly) everyone and everything. There is good to be found, in other words, even when you have to look very hard for it. Especially when you have to.

That’s what a lot of life feels like, I think, for many people—a desperate search for proof that yes, despite every disaster and tragedy and injustice that keeps happening (because politics and history perpetuate them), we can be good to each other. That this world is not, to use the title of an Explosions in the Sky album, “a cold dead place.” That we are not incapable of a better future.

Over the past few years, I’ve practiced finding joy in small things. Soaking rice (or as I like to say, giving rice a bath). A bouquet of green garlic. Shouting at Brandon Nimmo for sprinting to first base on a walk. The library receipt that tells me how much I saved by going to the library. The library, any library. The fact and existence of libraries.

Finding these small things isn’t a denial of how horrible the world can be and currently is. Rather, I believe the practice is vital for our wellbeing, both as individuals and communities. The only lesson I’ve taken from high school science is that neurons that fire together wire together: the more often you do something, the easier it becomes. Or, the more you associate something with another thing, the closer they become in your mind.

It becomes easier, in other words, for the light to get in.

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