I’ll always love the small things the most. The way my body feels when I wake up hours before my alarm, warm and tangled in sheets; a sip of icy water on a hot summer day; the feel of crisp pages between fingers; my dog’s legs pushing into me as he dreams. The way the earth feels in the morning, cool and untouched. Or the softness of a pillow when you’re so tired you can hardly open your eyes. I love the way people’s eyes connect when they speak, and how you can lose yourself in the colors, the pigments, the specks of their personality in each iris.

I love the way we speak, how our lips form sounds. How a simple smile cannot say anything, yet conveys so much. I love how it feels to have someone run their fingers through your hair, or kiss your forehead, or sometimes not say anything at all as they intertwine their fingers with yours.

Maybe it’s the writer in me, but I’ve always felt so drawn to the small things. To the simple ways we connect ourselves to one another, to the little things that define who we are and who we will become.

I’ve always loved feeling grass prickle my toes or the sun on my skin. Always felt connected through eye contact, through innocent smiles. I’ve always loved the way you can know a person by the little things—how they twiddle their fingers or chew their lip or bite their nails absentmindedly when they’re nervous, how their face flushes pink when they laugh, how they always look down before they speak—it’s like peeling back their layers without even realizing. It’s like wiping away the dust to see them, really see them and all their intricacies.

I love the simple things about this world. Not the grandest gestures, not the biggest ways you can connect with others or with yourself, but the tiny pieces of you that are almost overlooked. The itty bitty parts that make you, you. That make loving you so beautiful. That make this big, complex world so simple.

When it comes down to it, we’re all cells. We’re all tiny specks of matter and atoms and dust, compiled and chemically combined into these astounding beings. But when you reduce everything to it’s smallest components, we’re all the same. And we’re all so simple.

We laugh, cry, dream, kiss.
We want to be loved, have fear, fight, and run.

And we all want to find our place in this world, our piece to grab between our fingers and claim as our own. All want to be understood, to be cared for, to connect with those around us and feel love.

We’re so simple, really. Bodies and brains that crave connection. And that’s why I’ll always love the small things. The sunrise in the morning, the laughter shared between children, the first bite of breakfast, the smiles shared between strangers, the joining of two bodies into an embrace.

Sure, these things are little. But they are beautiful. So beautiful.
 

Featured Image Credit: Alex Perez
This post was originally published on Thought Catalog.