Tiny Perfect Things
“Most of life is just junk. It’s filler, and then there’s these moments when all the randomness turns into something perfect. It’s like life’s dropping all the bullshit just for a second to show us how amazing it could be all the time, if it wanted to.”
Mark (The Map of Tiny Perfect Things)
In The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things, a teenager (Mark) contentedly living the same day in an endless loop (think Groundhog Day without the angst) gets his world turned upside-down when he meets a girl who’s also stuck in the time warp. The movie is a love story, but the path to the conclusion is found in a map of every tiny perfect moment they can find in this singular day. As they repeat the day over and over, they have an opportunity to find all the things they would normally miss. Things everyone else misses.
This got me thinking. What am I missing every day?
Then last week, several people sent me the link to a post on Wait But Why. I had already read the post as I follow Tim Urban, and I highly recommend you do too. In fact, I’ll pause here for you to go read it. Let me know when you are back….
Great. So now you are thinking what I’m thinking: I don’t have many (fill in the blank) left! Sunrises, sunsets, flowers that are just opening, jokes that catch me off guard, delicious meals, great IPAs, evenings with friends, Thunder games, movie nights with my kids, dog kisses, babies to hold, etc., etc. We each have our own list.
All the “things” are wonderful, but what makes them all worth experiencing are the relationships. Relationships take time, period. There are no instant friendships. Time is limited, and the opportunities we have to spend time with family and friends (old or new) are slipping away with each day, week, and month. We must either be exceptionally intentional about the way we spend our time or acknowledge that we are missing relational moments that we can never get back.
It turns out that what was missing in the map of all the tiny perfect things they created was relationship. Both an openness to new ones and an acknowledgement of the reality that no matter how much we love someone, our time with them is finite and too short. That’s really all I have to say. Since you read Tim Urban’s piece, I’ll give you credit for that time and let you go early. I do want to repeat what he suggests, though. Priorities matter. Someone or something is determining where you spend your time. I hope it is you. Quality matters. We have such limited time, let’s not waste it on pettiness. When we focus on the people in our lives and treat the time we get to spend with them as precious, life is as amazing as it can be, and we are living The Kimray Way.