*Micro joys are how we survive macro grief…
A defunct wristwatch, a yellow plastic magnifying glass chosen from the prize box at school for an A+ on a math paper, and the eyeglass kit screwdriver dug from Grandma’s purse.
The trio provided hours of entertainment for my tiny self, disassembling the timepiece and holding the impossibly small gears on the tips of my fingers. I was mesmerized.
I don’t know who I saw pop the back off a watch first—probably Grandpa, who was always tinkering with something. Once I realized the plethora of tiny treasures hiding behind analog faces, I was at risk of becoming a kleptomaniac. At the very least, my usual quiet self became sporadically annoying, examining watches as they were still affixed to their owners and demanding to know when the battery might die so I could have another watch to gut.
One Christmas, the grandparents had the bright idea of gifting me a shoebox full of old watches.
And alarm clocks.
And more tiny screwdrivers—my own set, so Grandma could keep her glasses on her face.
All manner of mechanisms to disassemble. Fields ripe to harvest all the tiny micro-treasures.
In other words, they gave me a box of itty bitty joy.
Not sure how long this watch phase lasted, but I do know I was never able to reassemble any of the mess. And I also know an element of this fascination has clung on through adulthood.
I’m fascinated with the tiniest of things.
A single dandelion seed floating on the breeze.
The tiniest mushroom with the daintiest of gills.
The tiniest winged insect with that impossibly intricate maze of veins in its wings.
This fascination has proved a useful coping mechanism of late. Everything feels “too big” and “too much.”
It’s all… Macro.
I came across the above quote a while back, and boy did it land. This is what I’ve been doing. Maybe since childhood…
I keep a screenshot of a variation of that quote in my phone: “Micro Joys Combat Macro Grief.”
A reminder, or perhaps permission, for my brain to drop out of the great big mess, pause, and really look.
There’s a dedicated shelf in my office for such itty bitty joys, though I didn’t realize until this past week that I’d been curating tiny little joys in that tiny bookshelf space for a bit. Each piece, adding to a microcosm, anchors to joyous memories—even if, during the event, I was disconnected. A tiny object can transport me back to a sense of “yeah… that was fun. That was good.”
A tiny jelly jar from Oregon holding multicolored sea glass bits from a tiny, secluded beach in California.
Can’t part with those green plastic earrings from my first theater role.
I evidently can’t resist itty bitty mushrooms—whether they’re out in the wild or found in a gift shop touting the “healing qualities” of whatever crystal they're carved from.
Though I’m not sure of crystal healing properties, perhaps the healing comes from the joy, not the rock.
Speaking of rocks, there’s a nondescript one given to me by my favorite five-year-old, and such treasures are to be kept without question.
Quite a few others are personal reminders that I’m not alone in all this Macro.
Someone sees.
Someone hears.
Someone understands.
Sometimes when I’m sitting here typing, I’ll spin my chair around and face this shelf of itty bitties. Allow myself a moment to breathe away from the screen. I might even stand and fuss with the trinkets a bit. Rotate them around so they all get equal time to be enjoyed.
Then I’ll turn and face the screen again.
And type one itty bitty character after another after another until they create a microcosm of their own. Hopefully, they curate a space for my readers to experience a bit of escape from their own Macros.
And though my created worlds cannot reassemble anyone’s real-world mess, perhaps my attempts can be a reminder that my readers are seen.
They’re heard.
And that someone understands just how vital itty bitty joys can be.
*I’ve seen this sentence/idea in various forms. I’m going with Glo Atanmo for the attribution—if someone believes differently, please message me, and I’ll correct the credit. At any rate, those words are not mine, but I’m glad someone said them.)
