Let’s Try It: Adding Little Joys to the Everyday
Project 365, Day 177/365
Lately, on Saturdays, I’ve been sharing some food-related content. Recipes and whatnot. Sorry if you came here today for some recipe ideas for the week. I’ll try to get to it for tomorrow, but I wasn’t really feeling digging up meal ideas for myself just yet, and thought I’d touch on something else, instead.
A while back, I bookmarked this image shared by one of my favorites, Cathy Heller. I stumbled back upon it when I was digging around a few days ago, coincidently just after I wrote my lillordag post and it’s been stuck in my head again ever since.
I think about this…a lot. Even today, as I chatted with Charles about something, he brought up an old fable he remembered from childhood. About a grasshopper and an ant. I didn’t know the fable, but he summarized: a grasshopper sees an ant working hard on a beautiful summer day. The grasshopper, eager to live and take advantage of the right-now, couldn’t understand why the ant was working so hard for the winter that was coming. The winter eventually came, and the grasshopper wasn’t prepared. He was cold, and hungry, and turned to the ant for help. That jerk ant…I don’t think he helped. “But what’s the point of getting through winter if you can’t even enjoy the summer?” I said to Charles when he got to the end. “The grasshopper froze and starved! He could only enjoy that one summer!” Charles said in return..or at least something like that. I didn’t memorize his reaction. That’s the gist.
Sure, that fable and the thing I shared up top are not exactly the same, but you hear stories like that often. Work now, enjoy later. That’s Charles’ mentality. He’s an ant, all the way. I have to regularly remind him that sometimes, he can let up. Me, I’m the grasshopper. I want to live NOW, enjoy things NOW, and worry about tomorrow, well…tomorrow. I think that’s why lillordag has meant so much to me. Because it gave me an excuse to be who I want to be…the person who does not postpone happiness or joy. Waiting all week for Friday wasn’t working for me anymore. It never really worked for me.
There does, of course, need to be a balance. The grasshopper would never make it through the winter without an ant. The ant needs a grasshopper to remember what all that work was for to begin with. Not just for necessity and practicality, but for joy.
An old friend of mine, who sadly passed away last year, used to have a saying: “I only have so many heartbeats!” He’d say it emphatically, almost maniacally. He kind of used it as an excuse for his impulsiveness, but he wasn’t wrong. It can be hard to find healthy equilibrium between having the soul of a grasshopper but understanding the need for the ant’s work ethic. Right now, after thinking on it, I’m going to continue to inject small joys and wonders into my everyday as best I can. When quitting life and running away to Hawaii isn’t an option, I guess that’s what we can do, hm? Ha! Bake some cookies or bread. Go for a long afternoon walk. Call your mom (if that brings you joy). Laugh with a friend. Watch the hummingbirds out the window while sipping your morning coffee. Take a slightly longer lunch break…just because. Do a random dance in your kitchen while you wait for your eggs to boil. Whatever sounds good to you.
See you tomorrow, FOAS.