paradise is small

He who does not wish for little things does not deserve big things. ― Belgian proverb

Last week, I wrote about being an unraveling federal archivist. Well, I’m still here.

I’d love to say that between then and now, everything has resolved itself — that my job is secure, that the people who hold my future in their hands have suddenly gained an understanding of what I do, that the weight in my chest has lifted. None of that is true. The uncertainty still presses in, a constant companion breathing down my neck. The fear still lurks in the shadows of my thoughts, waiting to ambush me in quiet moments. But here I am, moving forward anyway. Not because I have some great faith that it’ll all work out how I want it to, but because I’ve found my own kind of resistance: claiming joy where I can, in the smallest and most ordinary moments that bloom suddenly.

Like when I took a break at work and saw the last cookie for sale — huge, still warm, packed with Hershey’s kisses. It was a ridiculous cookie, comically oversized, like something out of a childhood dream. And it was mine. For those few precious minutes, I wasn’t anxious — I was a ravenous little gremlin, tearing off pieces with reverent fingers, letting the chocolate melt on my tongue like a sacrament, refusing to rush through this small pleasure.

Or this morning, when I watched mallards flit about in the cold, their feathers iridescent against the gray water. They weren’t in a hurry. They weren’t worried about professional validation or existential purpose. They moved with an ease I envied. A quiet kind of resilience pulsed within them that I desperately wanted to absorb.

Or when I was driving, the sky shifting from deep blue to molten gold, Sam Cooke’s voice filling my car, wrapping around me like a blanket, both acknowledging my pain and promising something better.

None of these things fix what’s broken. They don’t erase the reality that my job — this work I love with a devotion that sometimes feels foolish — might slip through my fingers like air. But they are mine. And claiming them, savoring them, feels like an act of defiance against a system that could render me invisible.

Because when the world makes you feel small, when it tries to strip away your sense of purpose piece by piece, the most radical thing you can do is hold onto the slivers that remind you who you are. To insist on beauty, on joy, on whatever keeps you tethered to yourself when everything else threatens to set you adrift.

I’ve started keeping a list in a small notebook. Not a gratitude journal — I’m too honest with myself to force optimism — but an archive of small joys. Moments that puncture the dark fog—

The barista at my local coffee shop who remembers my order and always draws a tiny smile on my cup. Such a small thing, but it makes me feel seen.

Finding the perfect avocado at the grocery store. That precise moment of ripeness where it yields to gentle pressure, promising perfection inside.

The cool side of the pillow when I flip it over in the middle of the night, a small mercy that feels momentarily miraculous.

The perfect song coming on shuffle at exactly the right moment, as if my phone somehow knows what my heart needed to hear.

Sometimes I catch myself dismissing these scenes as trivial — what’s a cool pillow against the potential loss of a career? What’s a perfect song in the face of professional erasure? There’s a voice in my head, sharpened by anxiety, that wants to categorize these pleasures as insignificant, indulgent even. A voice that says I should be focusing on solutions, on survival, not on the way butter melts into toast or how wind chimes sound in the breeze.

But I’m learning to fight that voice. To recognize that diminishing joy is another form of unraveling — perhaps the most dangerous kind. Because once you stop claiming the small things, once you start believing that only the big, looming fears are real, the thread snaps entirely. These moments aren’t distractions from what matters; they are what matters. They’re the fragments of life that budget cuts and bureaucratic decisions can’t touch unless I surrender them willingly.

And I can always weave beauty into the fraying edges.

I’ve got to remember that.

So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll take the last cookie, letting crumbs fall where they may. I’ll watch the mallards cutting through water with perfect confidence. I’ll let Sam Cooke sing me into the morning with his promises of change. I’ll catalog these moments with the same care I bring to my work — meticulously, lovingly, recognizing their value even if no one else does.

Not because everything is fine, but because it isn’t. And still, still, I am here. Broken but unbowed, uncertain but undefeated. Working until the end, refusing erasure, preserving what matters: the truth of who we are, the beauty in what we’ve done, and the hope of what we will still create.

PS: Next week, I’ll return to Flippin’ the Script!!

If you made it this far, click that itty-bitty digital organ! ❤️