Ask most people about their life and they will tell you about the big days: weddings, births, the first job, the house move, the funerals. They are the days we photograph and come back to.
But if you count them, there are not many. Most of a life is made of days nobody would think to write down. A Tuesday in October. Toast, a drive, some emails, a phone call, tea in the evening. By the weekend you could not tell one from the next.
For a long time I treated those days as filler between the ones that mattered. They were something to get through on the way to the next event.
I am less sure of that now. When I think about the people I love, I mostly picture ordinary moments: the way someone makes a cup of tea, a remark in the car, the sound of the house on a weekday morning. None of it was ever an occasion, and all of it turned out to matter.
Perhaps the big days are only markers, and the ordinary ones are the life itself. If so, learning to notice them may be the whole trick.
I am writing this on a Tuesday. Nothing much has happened. It has been a good day.
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