My mind then wandered. I thought of this: I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments–we hear a word that sticks in our mind–or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly–we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the lagoon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a Dairy Queen–or we have an episode like the one I had with the M&M cars back at the Husky station. And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection–certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether; one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real–this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives. Douglas Coupland
About This Quote

When we think about the life of a person, we often focus on the big things. That is, we spend a lot of time thinking about the things that have happened to us and how these events have changed our lives. It is only when we step back and survey our lives that we see how small these moments actually are. And by stepping back and focusing on them, we can see how they contribute to the broader picture of what our lives mean.

For example, when we look at a short story or a poem, we see how each word and each line contributes to the whole. If we lose track of these small pieces and don’t make them part of our larger picture, it is possible to miss the whole story altogether. The same is true in life; we miss out on many opportunities when we forget to take note of these tiny moments that add up into something meaningful.

Source: Life After God

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