The Importance Of The Unimportant

Photo by Anna Sullivan on Unsplash

I know that one of the very basic rules of blogging is to use a self-explanatory title for your post rather than something enigmatic that doesn't quite make sense, but if anyone can advise me on how to come up with a title that is a) self-explanatory, b) short enough to fit on one line and c) actually makes a post sound interesting, then please let me know.

So yes, sorry for the enigmatic title. Let's see if I can sum it up in a paragraph instead shall we? (Unlikely).

The idea for this post came to me last weekend, when I was really quite hungover in London and decided that I couldn't face the tube back to Kings Cross so decided to walk the 45 minutes from my friend's flat instead. It was a beautiful sunny day and the walk triggered a memory.

Back when I lived in London, on a different beautiful sunny day, I needed to make the trip from central London back to my house in Lewisham. I decided that seeing as it was such a nice day, I'd start walking the bus route and hop on it when I got tired. I ended up walking the whole way. It took me two and a half hours, most of which I spent getting lost in places I'd never been before, but there was something so perfect about just walking with no real worry or purpose other than to eventually arrive home.

In the grand scheme of things, this memory is unimportant. Nothing special happened that day, I didn't see or do anything spectacular, but it's one of my favourite memories of living in London. I did lots of great things in London; I started university, I saw the fireworks on New Year's Eve, I graduated, all of which should be important memories. Yet the memories that mean the most to me aren't conventionally important at all; that two and a half hour walk through the capital, getting lost near Seven Dials and spinning round to decide which direction we should take.

The things that seem unimportant can actually be the things that end up meaning the most. There's importance in the unimportant and extraordinary in the ordinary, if that's how we see it.

This got me thinking about the way we view our lives in the now; comparing ourselves to people on Instagram who always seem to be doing something exciting, always trying to plan our next adventure or work towards the next milestone in our lives. I'm not denying that the big things are important, of course they are, but when we feel like our lives may be mundane or that nothing exciting has happened to us for weeks, in years to come we might remember that 'mundane' time as special.

Let's live for the little things and cherish the unimportant moments.

Do you have an 'unimportant' memory that's important to you?

Amy x