A lot of life can be found in the little things about people.

You know that feeling, right? The feeling that the lulled tide of small talk about surface level information has passed. The individual in front of you is suddenly no longer a blank slate off which to bounce standard social cues (or “chit chat”), but a real person. You can tell when you’ve reached the line between “amicable acquaintance” and “friend” - once a tightrope upon which you and this person teetered back and forth, now just kind of a line in the sand you are more than happy to leave behind you.

Friendship is built of the little things.

It’s the little things about a person that make them who they are. Their passions and quirks, their hobbies and their life’s goals, some of which wind up overlapping. You gather up the jigsaw puzzle pieces of their personality and trade them for your own, trusting them with who you are so they know they can trust you in return. You start to realize that some of your pieces look the same and promptly dissolve into a fit of excited giggles as you swap heartfelt sentiments on reading material, fandoms, interests of any sort, you name it. Some of little things you’ve liked over the course of your life instantly become more pronounced because you now have someone with to share them. And you find you like them a lot more with company.

Your every day is littered with the little things.

As you build your friendships, you start to see the little things of other people wherever you go. Little traces that remind you of the people you love. If you’re like me, you immediately whip out your phone and snag a chance for Snapchat or a quick text for no reason other than the fact that you’re thinking of your friends, your people, and you want them to know it. It’s their quirks, their loves, what’s important to them. And they’re important to you.

But the little things can be a burden.

Because say something went wrong, as things are want to do in this life. You messed up. They messed up. Most times, it’s a healthy mix of both. Things went off course one way or another. The little things keep catching your eye, but now it’s for a very different reason. The little things now hurt. You’re reminded of what happened, of how you treated them or how they treated you. It doesn’t matter how trivial the issue is. The little things are stained with the red tinting your vision with anger and the blue of regret, pain, melancholy, anything. You hate them just a little more with every reminder that they exist. Until resolution comes, if it ever does, the little things just serve to push you further away.

But the little things are not in your life for that purpose.

The little things that your brain latches onto remind you of some of the very best parts of life, the connections you make along the way. They shouldn’t change with the conflicts you face, even if those conflicts lead to separate ways. I myself am exceedingly prone to taking small reminders of past actions and past pain and brooding until I’ve forgotten every ounce of the goodness those little things once held. But to ignore either the good or the bad is to forget the love and the lessons learned. Turmoil, frustration, heartache, these things happen. We learn from them. Triumph, exuberance, joy, these things happen. We learn from them as well. No matter what happens in life, we cannot let the little things block our path by trapping us in our past.

We keep our eyes forward, thank the little things for the reminders of who we are and who we love, and we move forward.