Well, it’s been a different kind of a year hasn’t it? And now that Fall is here it’s about to become a different kind of holiday season. A lot of us are feeling cooped up. Not so much because we cant leave the house but because we feel weird getting out there on a big trip, or our favorite hangouts aren’t open for hanging out, or they just don’t have the same vibe, or we’re not free to just have people over whenever we want, or we’re just getting tired of baking banana bread. I’ve personally never baked banana bread but I hear it’s been big Covid thing.

Most of all I think everyone is feeling a little stir crazy with the same ol’ routine day after day. So this is where I remind you to hang in there, be patient, we’re going to get beyond this, and in the meantime … dig deep and reinvest in showing up for the small stuff.

I had a young friend pay me a huge compliment the other day. At least I think it was intended to be a compliment. She said, “For someone who has a lot going on you seem to try to take joy in a lot of small unimportant things.” To which I said, “I actually wish I was much better at embracing the small stuff.” Why? Because here’s the hard truth … With a few exceptions along the way, life pretty much is mostly the small stuff. A lot of small stuff. And even though it’s not easy to stay focused on making the most of all the tiny, banal bits of the day, when I do it makes all the difference.

Think about it. Here’s your life by the numbers:

If you live to be, let’s say 80—which I hope we all do, and far more—but by the time you make it to 80 you will have spent 26 of those years sleeping. You’ll spend an additional 7 years in bed trying to get to sleep or trying to wake up or doing “other things.”

In 80 years of living you’ll spend 13 years working, 4½ eating, 3 years on vacation, maybe 1½ years exercising, a little over 1 year on romance (from buying flowers to … you know), 1 year socializing with friends, and 2 years in school (from kindergarten through a bachelor’s degree).

Women will spend 136 days just getting ready for stuff, and men will spend only 46 days getting ready, which is probably why women are usually for ready for life than men. You’ll spend 235 days standing in line, 115 days laughing, 8.5 years watching TV and 3 years … sigh … on social media.

So what does that leave us? Well, if you live to be 80 then after all that stuff is handled you have 8½ years left. 8½ to commute, clean house, go to movies, have a family, run races, tell stories, and do the rest of your life.

I don’t know about you but that just feels grim. So naturally you might go back over the list to see where you could make some big cuts and gain more time. But of course you soon realize the list doesn’t have a lot of room for big cuts anywhere because the list is just a whole lot of little things. Which of course is my point … life really is mostly just a whole lot of little things.

And that, my friend, is why I try to encourage you to join me in the ongoing quest to show up for, be present in, and whenever possible, celebrate the small stuff. Because life IS the small stuff.

It is, at least for me, the most difficult of disciplines to master. But I’ve also noticed that taking time to notice the small, embrace the small, and enjoy the small, is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Small stuff adds up. Truth is, the small stuff is most of the stuff. It’s how we build things—a house, a habit, a craft, a relationship, a family. And, piece by piece, brick by brick, showing up for the supposedly trivial and unimportant stuff is the real secret to how we build ourselves a beautiful life.