Coming up on a year ago now, I annotated the first and only book I have ever annotated for personal enjoyment: Beautiful Boy by David Sheff. I made a color-code and everything; red tabs for heartbreak and anger, pink tabs for family and love, yellow for happy moments, green for miscellaneous stand-out details, and blue for the sad moments. If you haven’t read the novel or seen the film adaptation, just know that there was A LOT of blue.
Despite the tragic events that David Sheff recounts in his memoir, I finished the book with a surprisingly variegated rainbow of stickies and I ended up almost running out of many colors of the tabs, not just the blue ones. Over our recent Easter break, it was this rainbow that drew me in, and almost a year later I found myself opening the book once more to reflect on the moments that past-Sofi found significant. And I have to say, I haven’t changed one bit.
A yellow tab for a memory of the beach, of the California coast. A pink tab for a sentiment to the love between siblings. A green tab for the description of a messy kitchen, of dogs trotting around the dinner table and begging for scraps of food. Another yellow tab marks the time David Sheff and his son first took up surfing and another green marks a quote comparing their house to a zoo.
I went through the entire book, cover to cover, re-reading each and every page that I had marked. The vast majority of these tabs, however, did not mark the most impactful moments in the novel, and when they did, it was often to draw attention to a very minute detail within the event. Rather, the vast majority of the tabs I had stuck in the book were the little things. The tiniest, heart-beat-like details is how I would describe it. Just a little beat, a little heart pang and then gone, but for some reason still significant all the same.
I mean, it makes sense that these would be the details I marked. I tend to notice in excess the usually overlooked things: a fleeting glance of annoyance between two friends, the lingering hollowness of someone feeling just slightly left out, someone laughing at a joke for just a fraction of a second too long (it’s totally a little crush). I take notice of friends’ houses that feel extra homey, and when families seem to share a deeper bond. It’s a gift and a curse, one which I blame on my people-pleasing habits. Though I feel as if I’ve always been able to acknowledge and appreciate noticing the little things, I’ve come to realize that this habit is purely outwardly projected. I can’t think of a time when I’ve attempted to observe the little things in my own life or conducted any kind of introspection on the little-things-scale. People always say, It’s the little things in life. And not just everyone else’s life, but mine, too. Albeit a small goal, it’s beginning to appreciate the little things in my life that I aim to form a habit of this year, and you should too.