{"id":313,"date":"2006-02-11T16:16:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-11T15:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/2006\/2\/reasons_to_be_c.html"},"modified":"2006-02-11T16:16:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-11T15:16:00","slug":"reasons_to_be_c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/2006\/02\/11\/reasons_to_be_c\/","title":{"rendered":"reasons to be cheerful, part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nThe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/16358531\" title=\"AJRW\" target=\"_blank\">Renaissance Monkey<\/a> wrote something t&#8217;other day about <a href=\"http:\/\/renaissancemonkey.blogspot.com\/2006\/02\/things-that-make-you-go-mmmmm.html\" title=\"Things that make you go mmmmmmm\" target=\"_blank\">things that make one disproportionately happy<\/a>.  It brought a smile to my face so started adding things:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Strangers who open doors (the real kind, I&#8217;m not talking about opportunistic networking)\n<li>A smile (with no nefarious or obscene intent) from a fellow TFL passenger\n<li>Coming in from the cold to a warm smile and a warmer hug (this goes hand in hand with his wet winter&#8217;s day one, with which I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically agree &#8211; only I&#8217;ll have a nice man, please, to go with my book)\n<li>Chilli Spicy Tuna Maki at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.planet99.com\/chicago\/restaurants\/10942.html\" title=\"Bob San\">Bob San<\/a>\n<li>When you&#8217;ve got your iPod on shuffle and you&#8217;re thinking about someone and suddenly a song comes on that always reminds you of that person and you grin like an idiot for a second or ten\n<li>East facing bedroom windows\n<li>A lunchtime visit to see the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artic.edu\/aic\/collections\/eurptg\/highlight_item.php?acc=1959.172\" title=\"Dancing Girl, 1940\" target=\"_blank\">Dancing Girl<\/a>\n<li>A freshly sharpened knife for chopping\n<li>Fresh hot ginger tea\n<li>Finding a key on the ground when out for a walk\n<li>The meta-tamarind and similar nonsenses\n<li>Sun on the water\n<li>Exchanging greetings with your favourite vendor in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.columbia-flower-market.freewebspace.com\/\" title=\"Columbia Road Market\" target=\"_blank\">Columbia Road Flower Market<\/a>\n<li>A compliment when you weren&#8217;t trying\n<li>Sleeping with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tentfort.com\/images\/nelson_3.jpg\"  title=\"Nelson in a shirt\">Nelson the Dog<\/a> or the dear, beautiful, departed <a href=\"http:\/\/nocommercialpotential.net\/daily\/jan02\/img\/010602.jpg\" title=\"Akasha\">Kittenhead<\/a>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nBut at one point during the listing (the one about compliments, actually, which began as <em>&#8220;Encouragement that comes when you need it more than you&#8217;d thought&#8221;<\/em>, I had to stop myself to and ask, &#8220;is that really a small thing?  Does that qualify?&#8221;  And this thought is still circling in my head: why do these count as small things?  Is it because they might go unnoticed by others, or by ourselves?  Or because they don&#8217;t cost much?  It can&#8217;t be based on size or time commitment &#8211; a diamond is (hopefully) physically small, but to receive one is (hopefully) not a small deal by anyone&#8217;s measure.  A kiss might only take a second, but it can change the whole world for the two who are in it.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI&#8217;m not trying to be overly pedantic or willfully obtuse, I promise.   But this interests me &#8211; why should we classify things as small when they clearly mean a lot to us?  Some people I know, some things I love, every time I see them my heart does a little leap.  Is that a small thing?  To me, it&#8217;s huge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Renaissance Monkey wrote something t&#8217;other day about things that make one disproportionately happy. It brought a smile to my&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}