One of the canvasses in my room tells me to “enjoy the little things,” which I try to make a conscious effort to do so. Little things are the building blocks for the big things in life. You will never have those big things if you never stop and enjoy the little moments in life.
There are little moments every day that can lead to friendships, relationships, and lots of memories. Most of the time, you don’t realize the memories you are making until they are in the past. When you look back at every relationship you have had with a person, is there a moment you can distinctively remember when you became friends? Probably not. You can probably remember when or where you met them or things like that, but you can’t specify the exact moment when you became friends. Don’t worry, you aren’t a bad friend for not remembering. I honestly think there is never just one big moment where you establish your friendship. The little moments and times together build and add on to one another, and then, one day, you look at your relationship with the other person and classify them as a friend, because of the many good times you shared. That’s why those little things are so crucial. Without them, there would never be friendships or relationships that could be created.
Let me tell you a little story about my experience. Both my freshman and sophomore year at Indiana University, I went into my roommate situation with only Facebook conversations and a few meetings. My freshman roommate became one of my best friends, and then we decided to room together again and find two more roommates for our sophomore year. So, back to Facebook we went, and we found two people looking for roommates, so we went for it. They were all nice people, but when I first moved in I wouldn’t classify them as friends. After the few initial days, we all started to do more things together. We would go to the pool and hang out or cook dinner together. We decorated the apartment with IU memorabilia and recently with Halloween decorations. We would walk to get ice cream and then sit and talk on each other’s beds for hours about really random, but sometimes deep, things. We hosted Taco Tuesday for our other friends. This past weekend, we went to a pumpkin patch and carved pumpkins together. Those are the little memories I have that helped build our friendship.
Now I can honestly say these girls are my very close friends and I am so thankful to have them as roommates. I can also say that there was never a specific moment when we were hanging out when we became friends. It was just a gradual process through our many memories together.
So my message to all of you is to enjoy those little things in life. Stop and smell the roses every once in a while. Do the things that make you happy and enjoy every moment of it. You never realize just how important those little things in life are until they are gone. Little memories make even the best relationships better.
