Journal Entry: List of Things I Love

I forgot how many simple things make me happy.

I am sitting on a beautiful open deck with my morning coffee at one of my favorite coffee shops. The breeze is perfectly tossing my hair around as the birds are chirping in such a coordinated harmony, it is almost as if they are sound effects in a movie. In this moment, I smiled thinking about how present I am and how content I feel sitting outside noticing these everyday features that I don’t always stop to appreciate. With my journal in hand, I wanted to write about how I felt and how I need to start taking these moments more religiously in my everyday patterns. Instead, a conversation with a friend came into mind where she told me she recently did a meditative exercise in which she recalled some things she loved and felt the light fill her up from these things.

I had a flood of nostalgia wash over me as I realized how simple we are at a young age. Our brains are not yet conditioned by our environment, we just explore what we’re curious about and smile when we feel happy. I started thinking about all of those things that made my happy as I grew up- playing in the leaves of my yard during a crispy fall day, the feeling of a shower after a long day on the beach, the smell of fire outside when winter comes around. I turned to a fresh page and wrote “Things I love.”

The list came pouring out of me. From past to present, I was jotting down and reliving moments that I completely let slip my mind. From simply writing down “plants” to “waking up in the middle of the night to thunderstorms,” my heart was leading the pen across the page. Warmth washed over me and with a smile plastered on my face, I saw all the things that I love fill up the pages.

There is something special about this exercise. Your heart opens, you drop into your true self, and you see how much light comes from inside of you. Once I finished my list, I went through and thought about how many things I love are so easily attainable yet so easily forgotten. Now I have a reminder to myself when I feel disconnected from who I am and what makes me tick. A reminder that I know exactly the answers to fill my heart when it is either empty or almost completely full.