What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

It seems to me that my life, although not at all what I expected it to be, is full of small moments of pleasure, little joys, that make my days worth a good night’s sleep and a sound cup of coffee in the morning. Maybe it is too little to settle for.

I am watching,very slowly, a K- Drama called Crash Landing On You that is so romantic, so heartbreaking, that at the end of each episode I am left astonished. I am watching it so slowly because at one point I could not bear its uncertainty, and watched the last episode to make sure it all ended well. And I began three others, some of which I have already concluded, while prolonging this very best of the best serial. It is a story of the kind I love best, a love crossing boundaries, that takes a very long time to resolve. I have loved love stories like this since I was seventeen, love stories that taxes its lovers cruelly by society, in which the lovers sometimes wait a lifetime to find their happiness. It is why I always rooted Odysseus to return to Penelope.

But my life is nothing like the sweet romances that I am lately watching with such delight. My life has no romance, but it does have comfort. Even as I watch a crucial scene from the drama, tears streaming, my cat comes over to investigate, make sure I am okay. I went to the beach for the first time today, in a very long time, to see the ocean,and video-called my mom, so she could see the ocean as well. I had dinner with a friend yesterday, glad to break bread in good company, seeing other people, saying hello, These moments in my life are precious, worth paying attention to. They remind me I am not adrift, alone in the world.

I sense I will live alone, though, for the rest of my life, but as I type this, my cat yowls in her own pain downstairs. She is getting old, and not always certain what she wants. I call to her, come puppy, because sometimes puppy just becomes a generic term of endearment. She had been ill for a while, and although she is doing well lately, I wonder if her ailment flares up enough mysteriously to make her cry. Or is it she suddenly realizes she is alone, while the other cat and I are upstairs, and cries out in confusion? Usually, it is only one cry she lets out before settling for the night.

So I think I will pay attention— ah, a second cry, and I’ve brought her upstairs, and now the two cats are hissing at one another. They are mother and daughter, used to having their own space, although on a rare moment, they will lie side by side peacefully.

How to not notice, how not to pay attention in this wild and wooly world of ours?