SMALL THINGS / BIG THINGS

what i would + wouldn't miss on earth

Nudged by Nora Ephron’s lists of things she would miss (the most tenderly arresting, for me, being ‘Next year in Istanbul’), written before she died in 2012, I spent one morning mulling over what I might miss, what makes any life a full one, and revisiting my own definition of the encouragement to “live every day like it’s your last.” At first hearing, this platitude can seem to incite a peculiarly stressful way to live. But I don’t think it’s actually meant to be about impulsively going skydiving, or running through the airport to haphazardly confess your love for someone. I don’t think it’s in support of recklessness or refuting consequence. I think what it means to say is “do the day you are already about to do, but enjoy the things you would usually overlook.” Like waiting, orange peel, undressing before taking a shower, answering an inconvenient call from Mum. It’s an exercise that echoes the celebration of earthly everyday-ness found in Claire Nivola’s Star Child (a beautiful narration of which can be found here.)

After a few minutes at my desk, “what I’ll miss” was an easy list to write. Too easy; a natural edit provided by its slight distinction from a list of simply “what I like.” Much harder, I found, was “what I won’t miss” — what I realized in the process (after a solid quarter-hour staring at the blank page, and with an annoyingly sentimental smile) is that even the stuff I think I hate, that I assume I won’t miss, is stuff that bears its own charm purely because it exists on this planet and, once I leave, I will never have the experience of it again. Like Amy Rosenthal’s light switches. And so in addition, as a coda, I will finish this article with a list of things I won’t necessarily miss, yet will continue to find some partially-inexplicable, antithetical enjoyment in while I’m here. While I get to be human.

If you feel inspired to write your own, please feel free to share with me — I would love to read them.

“When I am feeling dreary, annoyed, and generally unimpressed by life, I imagine what it would be like to come back to this world for just a day after having been dead. I imagine how sentimental I would feel about the very things I once found stupid, hateful, or mundane. Oh, there’s a light switch! I haven’t seen a light switch in so long! I didn’t realize how much I missed light switches! Oh! Oh! And look — the stairs up to our front porch are still completely cracked! Hello cracks! Let me get a good look at you. And there’s my neighbor, standing there, fantastically alive, just the same, still punctuating her sentences with you know what I’m saying? Why did that bother me? It’s so… endearing” — Amy Krause Rosenthal
from Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

WHAT I WON'T MISS

Smartphones

Incendiary headlines

24/7 “News”

Mosquitoes

Bin juice

Relentless under-the-radar harassment

Uncharismatic politicians

Unoriginal politics

Tipping in America

Office lighting

Hay fever

Charger cables

Selfies in front of views that haven’t been looked at yet

Societal Rules that don’t make logistical sense eg. being supported for getting into debt yet punished for buying things with your own hard-earned money and thus not accruing a ‘credit score’

Injustice

Nausea

Crying babies

Two factor authentication

The visa application process

The concept of visas

Anyone who would rather go to war than enjoy the night sky

Conversations for the sake of them

Bohemian Rhapsody

Trendy bodies

Tupperware


WHAT I WILL MISS

Take-off

Fireflies

The sound of a cork popping

Arriving on the doorstep of an old friend’s home after a long journey

Thunderstorms

Spooning

Snow

The smell of coffee in the morning while I’m still in bed

How comfortable bed feels in the morning

Swimming in the Mediterranean Sea

Neon vapour trails

The tap + rattle of a workshop with its door open to the street

The scent of onion + garlic cooking in butter

The scent of dry pine needles in high Summer

Witnessing something funny and catching the eye of a stranger who witnessed the same

Motorcycle rides

Dancing with friends

Sending post to friends

Wrapping gifts

Moonrise

Jeff Buckley

Warm exchanges when no one speaks the same language

Lambs

Limes

Candlelight

Cooking for myself

Cooking for friends

Phosphorescence

The familiarity of creaky floorboards that hint at everyone’s location within a house

Mix CDs

The walk-run — always a smidge too long and awkward — towards a friend you are meeting at a train station / bus stop / airport for a long-awaited reunion, and you spot each other with a wave then have to traverse the space in between

Eating curry with my hands

The deep sleep following a day of joyous exertion in the sun

Pasta

Piano

Pomegranates

Jacaranda blossoms

Stacks of books

The feel of old photographs

The clink + hum + intermittent peak laughter around a dinner party table (something I heard a lot of as a child, and found comforting; listening to my parents and their friends from the stairs when I was supposed to be already in bed and asleep)

Butterflies (in the tummy kind)

Shower hour in Summer (when everyone gets home from the beach, and it’s almost dusk but not quite time for apero)

Masking tape

Country walk and pub lunch on a Sunday

Stars

Seasons

Handwriting


CODA

A lugubrious cashier

Traffic jams on rainy nights

Miscommunication

A clogged pipe that must be tended to immediately

Unexpected interruptions to whatever I had planned

The scripted exchange of a call to corporate customer service

The hold music during a call to corporate customer service

The way airport functioning is wholly dependent on, yet feels surreally irrespective of, time

A ruined roll of film

Family dissonance

Bucket lists

A tiny stone stuck in the sole of my shoe that clicks with each step

The concept of manners

Lost luggage

Chaos