In defense of the little life

Unfurling into the moments that make time stand still

David Foster Wallace once said, “The ultimate way you and I get lucky is if you have some success early in life, you get to find out early it doesn’t mean anything.”

I got lucky when I was still a baby, a mere 25 years old. I’d just arrived in the Big Apple, at the top of the hill I’d climbed, a little out of breath, and flabbergasted. I’d achieved everything on my list — fancy jobs, titles, and travels, everything that was supposed to make me happy. My life was increasingly resembling a Gossip Girl episode. How could I possibly still feel so empty?

It was then and there, at what should have been the pinnacle of my youth, that the red carpet was pulled out under me. The even more dire truth was that I knew nothing about how to make life feel full. I had an impressive career but no hobbies. A great resume but a lost mind. Little meaning outside work beyond friends and family.

Rather than creating a happier life, which felt way too intimidating, I began searching for happier moments. I found them in yoga classes where I barely moved for the whole hour, letting myself rest for the first time in years. I found them skipping fancy parties for early morning bike rides to Central Park to put my feet in the grass. I found them twirling around on the ground, melting into the sweet mushroom-land.

I began writing little poems in my Notes app that at first I only shared late at night when I was too drunk to feel embarrassed. Then I began writing little articles on Medium that were quite insignificant to anybody but me in prose that was quite awful except it was prose and it was the first creative act I’d indulged in since teenagehood.

This is great, my friend said when I showed her one of my articles, but what are you going to do with it? I didn’t have an answer. Nothing!, I would tell her now, I plan to do absolutely nothing with it because for once in my life I would like to do something that isn’t results-driven. The act itself is the justification, the result a mere cherry on top. What would you do if the outcome wasn’t the point?

These early attempts were baby steps into unfamiliar territory: the little life. I’d known the ‘big life’. The big life, with its big goals and five-year plans. The big life that somehow only ever happens in the future, until suddenly it’s here and doesn’t feel so big after all.

The little life is different. The little life optimizes not some distant future in which we’ve achieved whatever we believe will relieve us from our existential suffering. The little life is only ever concerned with the now.

The little life doesn’t prioritize outcomes, it’s about the journey. It relies on the joy triggers in our day-to-day, and on slowing down enough to notice them. The little life doesn’t ask for much, but it gives relentlessly.

And even though I know this, I continue to fall prey to the mind’s illusions. Faltering under the pressure to fulfill my purpose, I forgo rest and play to work on side hustles, repeating the same patterns that burned me out the first time around, when it took a Covid knock-out to agree to a break.

As the ego’s fears cast a collar around my neck, I choke and let the beauty of the little life slip through my fingers. Soon, I’m dragged back into an isolated chamber, head-down on my desk crafting a more beautiful future, while my very beautiful present is passing by right outside the window.

The snail girl lifestyle, a slow-living philosophy that felt revolutionary when I first discovered it, once again forgotten.

The antidote to the girl boss, the snail girl doesn’t hustle, she luxuriates. Snail girls don’t chase worldly successes, they cherish time well spent above all else. Because snail girls live and breathe the ultimate truth: the most valuable resource we have is time. And for some reason, the slower we move, the more of it we seem to have.

Snail girls know a secret the world seems to hide from us: the little life stretches time.

Time is the only real luxury we have. The one limited resource we all share.

Time to spend with each other, undistracted. Time to listen to music, dance, read, play, rest, cook, be out of office, in nature, and yes, smell the flowers.

They say a happy life is just a string of happy moments. If I were to ask you now: what have been your happiest moments in the past year? Unless you had a baby or got married or something other spectacularly special, you’d likely cite the mundane. Time with the kids or pets. Walks in nature. Meals, trips, and holidays with loved ones. A hot beverage first thing in the morning.

This is where joy hides — not in the grandiose, but in the mundane. The mundane that is in reality quite divine, but there is a caveat: to recognize the divinity, we must pay attention. And to pay attention, we must be present, undistracted, and unhurried. In short, we must be here now.

Which we rarely do because our focus is always on tomorrow, on what we can do to work towards a better future. But when we get to that future, the then now-self isn’t paying attention because it’s already busy plotting an even better future.

The mind is greedy. And weirdly irrational. Because once we realize that the “if this then that” logic doesn’t work, we should abolish it. And yet, our mind defaults back to it time and time again. Tricking us that this time, in this future, it will be different.

If we can’t find what we’re looking for now, we won’t find it in the future. We’re looking for happiness in places where it cannot be found, because happiness imagined is nothing more than a longing mind attaching itself to some future circumstance. And a longing mind is the opposite of a happy mind. (Not my words, but the Buddha’s.)

This is the practice. We may come into this world as snails, but we quickly learn the rules of the game: in this world, if you snooze, you lose. Playing slow is for the lazy and dumb. Small is bad. Big and more is always better. Off to the races we go.

The little life teaches us that when we forget about all the things that are supposed to make us happy, and instead let ourselves savor the tiny treasures that make time stand still along the way — it is in those moments that life feels rich and expansive. It is the little life fully lived that becomes bigger than anything we could have dreamed of.

What are your biggest joy triggers? When does time stand still for you? How has slowing down been rewarding for you?

"A happy life is just a string of happy moments.” — Anonymous

More from my universe

• Book a private session for somatic therapy or psychedelic coaching

• Get on the waitlist for upcoming yoga and medicine retreats

• Download my free psychedelics for beginners guide

• Download my free psychedelic integration workbook

Artwork shared by Jacquelien Koopman