Life for a lot of us is serious business and about those big moments. We live it with all sincerity and sometimes make it too stressful for ourselves.

But it need not be so always. I had this realisation this week through something which happened very casually…

This Friday, my daughter traveled in a metro train for the first time in her conscious memory. It was a usual trip with her grandparents and while I didn’t expect it, she was visibly elated at the chance to take a metro ride.

When I picked her up after the ride, she was ecstatic. On our way home, she talked about her journey briefly. She also kept on looking at the various under construction flyovers and ones where we had to cross under them, thinking those were for the metro and pointing them to us. It was a memorable experience for her and she expressed it openly.

As I saw her excitement, it took me back to the days when I first rode on an airplane and how I also had the same enthusiasm for sharing my experience with others. I was in my teens then and hadn’t ‘experienced’ life.

However a few years later, when I took my first metro ride, or when I first traveled outside India, while I was amazed at the experiences, I didn’t show much enthusiasm to share them with others but chose to keep them to myself.

As life has passed by, such smaller things slowly have stopped carrying the same significance that similar experiences carried earlier. I have become much more reserved in expressing them, perhaps considering them par for the course or just being too aware.

Maybe it has happened because there are other things which occupy my mind. And those bigger things prevent it from acknowledging the smaller things for a while longer than before.

Or maybe while there’s happiness in these new experiences, I have been corrupted and unable to give them their due.

Whatever it may be, this Friday’s incidence made me think about those little experiences. How they not only gave me happiness when I went through them but continue to remain fresh in my memory even now.

It also made me think about the many small and happy experiences I continue to have on a regular basis and how I need to be more aware of acknowledging them, sharing them with others, and being thankful for these small joys that life is bringing my way.

As it is many a times, profound things are often understood when we aren’t searching for meaning with a candle light!