The Best List I Ever Made
What is an ordinary life made of? How do we pass our days?
With a million dog walks. Toast eaten in a hurry before work. Good coffee, bad coffee, too much coffee. Hearing our kids giggling in the next room over…
Deadheading potted flowers on the patio.
Walking into a glowy restaurant with clinking glasses and chatter, delicious aromas, and the light scent of strangers' perfume filling the air.
The cat rubbing on your leg while you fold laundry.
Mushy bananas.
Banana bread afternoons—the mushy bananas put to good use.
A neighbor stopping by unexpectedly with flowers from their yard, homemade salsa, a quick hello and hug.
Picking cucumbers from the garden.
Tucking little bodies into little beds with too many stuffies and too many last kisses and too many whispers in the dark of “Just one more thing…”
Hummingbirds buzzing overhead.
Naps you didn’t mean to take, but that feel so, so good.
Baking sweet potatoes.
When old friends know you so well that they know what you need before you tell them.
Sitting on the stairs reading a card that came in the mail.
Spontaneous hugs in the kitchen.
The doorbell ringing—that lovely sound made of anticipation and surprise.
The first snow. The first tulip. The first peach. The first orange leaf.
Opening the blinds to a morning sky streaked with cotton-candy colors.
Pulling weeds.
Singing along with a favorite song in the kitchen while chopping vegetables.
Bed head. So much bed head. The cute kind. The funny kind. The scary kind.
Walking into your house to the smell of really good dinner after a long day at work.
Clean sheets.
Hot showers.
Favorite PJs.
The smell of the local library, familiar and settling.
Filling the bird feeder.
Reading an engrossing book.
Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.
A walk around the block after dinner.
Stinky dog farts that make everyone giggle.
A great movie at the theater—and popcorn. Don’t forget the popcorn.
Taking out the trash.
Dinner with friends at that casual, tucked-in neighborhood place you all love.
Getting a new magazine in the mail.
Finding a new series on TV and curling up with your honey—now calling it “our show.”
Talking to your neighbor in the driveway, over the fence, or stopping in your car when you see them on the sidewalk.
Drinking tea out of your favorite mug.
Cleaning out a closet and ending up sitting on the bedroom floor looking through old photos for an hour.
Putting on the jewelry that your mother wore.
The moment you plop down on the couch after dinner, the dishes done, the school lunches made.
Friends getting sick—bringing them soup, cards, and flowers.
Pizza and beer on a Friday night.
Texting your partner just three words while they travel for work: “I miss you.”
Staring out the window at a hard, steady afternoon rain.
Your dog, always excited to see you, even when you just took the trash out and came back in.
Making yourself a really tasty, simple lunch on a Saturday—then, like an actual civilized human, sitting down to eat it.
Teaching your child something your dad taught you.
Meeting your teenager's girlfriend or boyfriend for the first time.
Sitting at your desk, a warm, purring cat in your lap.
Waking up before everyone else in the house—and loving the stillness.
Buying new underwear.
I love yous—so many soft I love yous spoken in low tones, in quiet moments.
Pumpkin muffins in October.
A head cold that keeps you home, in bed, with a good book, a box of tissues, and naps you don’t feel guilty about.
A tiny bat flying above your head, silently arriving with dusk.
Getting an impromptu invitation from a friend.
One of many, many sunsets I have witnessed from Meyers Gulch trailhead in the mountains by my home. Ordinary and extraordinary all at once.
When the kids say, “Thanks for dinner.”
Giving someone you love a gift you are so excited to offer them.
Putting a stamp on a letter.
Long car rides with comfortable silence.
The moment people arrive for a dinner party—the air filled with uplifting energy and possibility.
Knowing that mom always has gum in her purse—anytime you want gum, it's magically there.
Planting the garden, each year an exercise in hope.
Hard conversations with your spouse at the kitchen table—and then make-up hugs.
Spending time with your grandparents and sitting around “visiting”—sort of bored but comfortable, an honor and a duty all at once.
Watermelon.
Lightning bugs. Please, don’t ever let the lightning bugs stop.
When the dog dreams (yipping, feet twitching, funny growly sounds).
A hard day at work—and having someone to talk about it with.
Late nights helping a kid with math homework, a project for Spanish class, or a slightly gross science experiment you have to keep on your kitchen counter for a month.
Starting a new creative project.
Lighting candles for family dinner—even on unremarkably normal nights.
Going to the bookstore without a plan for what book to buy.
Puttering in the yard, raking and picking up sticks.
Going to a weird live performance with friends and afterward laughing about it until your bellies hurt.
Listening to radio news on your way to work.
A bumblebee haphazardly bumping into your arm while you sit in your backyard.
Making the grocery list.
Wearing your favorite winter wool socks.
Staying up too late, knowing it's too late, and doing it anyway, secretly wishing the night would keep stretching out without the clock ticking along.
Pancakes on Saturday morning.
The smell of your spouse's cologne or perfume lingering in the room after they have left.
Sitting at the kitchen table longer than you meant to while talking with one of your kids—trying to act cool about it on the outside, but on the inside, dying from how much you love this moment.
Seeing a goldfinch—a flash of yellow zipping between trees.
Going on the run, the bike ride, the hike, the walk.
Signing permission slips—so many permission slips.
Corn on the cob in August.
Rushing around to get to church on time, everyone frantic, everyone looking dapper.
Getting new towels.
Coming back to a toasty warm house after a blustery winter walk.
This list, one of the best I think I have ever made, was inspired by an unlikely topic: envy. I have been reading and doing a deep dive into the very human emotion of envy. We all experience it at some point or another. Generally, men feel envy when comparing themselves to other men’s career success and financial prosperity. For women, it is most often triggered by comparison with other women’s physical beauty. But for each of us, a particular flavor of envy shows up in our hearts—unique to us, yet dark and ominous just the same—and chips away at our sense of worthiness and being good enough. At its core, envy is about comparison, and it almost always makes us feel bad.
To add insult to injury, we now have windows into the lives of celebrities, renowned academics, talented creatives, and everyone else in between through the digital world. We see posts about others' lives, thoughts, and work—the good stuff. And every scrolling moment is poised to fuel the fire of envy burning in our gut. As Roosevelt famously said, comparison is the thief of joy. The better their lives look—the smarter, the more beautiful, the easier—the more we forget that we aren’t seeing the whole truth. Social media offers a curated image of one’s life—the version one wants others to see. A version that demands twenty takes to get just right—rehearsal after rehearsal, so much time spent on capturing the perfect angle, because what keeps the attention of others is not the mundane, the routine, or the ordinary.
Most of us know this already.
So instead of stewing on how we live in a world where people use social media to share only certain parts of their lives, further sparking unhealthy comparison and envy, I started thinking about the ordinary things that make up a life—any life. My life.
So I made this list. It was fun. You could make one too.
Make a list of what composes your life—your regular days and nights, seasons, activities, chores, and joys alike. This list becomes a celebration of the smallest things. These are the things that make up the lives we all live. We all eat, gather, work, play, do boring and mundane things, silly things, and laugh and cry. The beautiful ordinariness of life is made of these daily, seemingly unremarkable activities—and it is what makes our lives truly meaningful.
Enjoy the slow- Heather