Why Small Pleasures Become a Bigger, Not a Smaller Deal, the More We Suffer and Age

There’s an apparent paradox in the way that the longer we have lived, the more appreciation we tend to develop for very small and rather undramatic things: a moment in the kitchen with a square of dark chocolate, a walk to work, the first shoots in the garden in January, a weekend with no obligations, a very hot bath, conspiratorial laughter with a friend, a new book. These things matter more rather than less even as our experience of the outer world and its people and places keeps increasing.

Things tend to begin very differently; with relentless appetites for scale and outward excitement. We want to bestride the world, leave a mark and meet soulmates. We get bored in minutes in the most majestic settings. We take the greatest mysteries in our stride. We seldom stop by the side of the road to think or look. 

But at some point, the direction of ambition reverses – and what tends to initiate the change is pain. The more challenging existence as a whole becomes, the more we get to know about love, sickness, infighting, intransigence, career reversal and political turmoil, the more we may appreciate what remains pure and hopeful, despite its modest appearance or lack of obvious glamour. Our respect for a fig, a moment of calm and a kind but unexciting friend is underpinned by memories of nights of crying, months lost to argument and instances of untrammelled despair in the bathroom in the darkness.

It is difficulty that catalyses our interest in and respect for gardening or a painting of a lake in autumn, the lifecycles of ducks or an article on the moons of Jupiter. It’s people who have known far more than they ever wanted about dementia, cancer, employment law, divorce and mental institutions, who are the great appreciators of blossom, empty days, train journeys and the moon above the house on warm evenings.

To a five year old, it’s just another ice cream and another sunny day. To the grandparent sitting with them, everything is close to supernatural: the tiny fingers, the small plump body, their child who is now a parent loading up the car, the sound of a House Finch somewhere in a tree. The child – if they are fortunate – has no sense of the fragility of everything and of the cruelty waiting in the wings. Who can know the pleasures of a boring day until there’s been a crowd at the door; who can delight in an uncomplicated chat until they’ve struggled to get something vital across to someone whom they eventually had to leave in order to save themselves; who can delight in another scoop of vanilla and melted chocolate until they have – at best – three summers left.

The simple wonders of the world are constantly being rediscovered; those at the vanguard of doing so are are those who have first had to walk the corridors of hell.