- My mother and I have sipped tea with maharanis, swapped stories with Burmese nuns and bumped through the streets of Bangkok on midnight tuk tuks — but the delight we return to, again and again, is the moon. “Go outside and take a look,” she’ll command over text, and I’ll stumble out the door to glimpse at a crescent sliver. We swap cellphone photos of fuzzy white discs that are indistinguishable from the ones that preceded them but offer what feels like newfound delight. Our shared moon: a simple joy that binds us together across years and over continents.
- Although we, as a culture, typically favor the superlative, research shows that moonlight, and everything that is revealed in ordinary moments of our life, matters. Valuing the routine enriches our lives in ways we do not expect, because “how we spend our days,” the author Annie Dillard reminds us, “is how we spend our lives.”
- Ting Zhang, assistant professor at Harvard Business School, underscored the significance of the everyday in a recent study. “What we wanted to do,” Dr. Zhang explained, “was show that people underestimate the value of documenting the present, especially the mundane. We hire photographers for special occasions, but don’t really capture the rich day-to-day experiences that make up so much of our life.”
- Dr. Zhang and her team assembled 135 undergraduate students and asked them to put together time capsules — written reflections on quotidian experiences including the last social event they attended, three songs they had recently listened to and a Facebook status update.
- These reflections offer a way to make sense of the ways we’re tethered to the world around us but, as Dr. Zhang’s study shows, what we think we value can shift over time.
- Introspective writing can help reduce blood pressure, increase immune function and mitigate impacts of stress, depression and diseases ranging from to irritable bowel syndrome and breast cancer to asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. But its most enduring value lies in self-discovery: We unearth ourselves through the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
- In “Essentialism,” Mr. McKeown encourages readers to review their writing every 90 days or so and closely assess small details. Passing events or brief encounters that seemed trivial in the moment might take on new weight — or reveal larger life patterns. Looking back to discover what is meaningful and true can help us propel forward in a new way.
- “Your inner world is a gold mine,” Ms. Jensen said. “When you connect that with your outer world — boom! Magic happens. You create something that hasn’t been done before. You peel back another layer that otherwise would have been overlooked and tell a story that only you can tell.”
- And keep documenting. Because we don’t always know what may hold meaning in the future, capture whatever life fragments move you today. Ponder the weight of your lover’s grasp. Record birdsong. Trace the shape of a shared moon. Or write about it all. In our journals, Ms. Jensen reminds us: “We can be messy. We can go backwards or sideways. We can be wrong. We can embrace confusion with the same tenderness as we embrace delight and joy.”
- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/smarter-living/why-mundane-moments-matter.html?campaign_id=33&emc=edit_sl_20200330&instance_id=17176&nl=smarter-living®i_id=89438771&segment_id=23279&te=1&user_id=06e5c745ba361230df01524e75328d8e
mar 31 2020 ∞
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