Words from a wallflower

“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.” That was the quote by Jon Kabat-Zinn I saw on a plaque that was one of many on a bridge above a freeway in Denver, and it summed how I felt on this past Saturday. The cars roared under the bridge, the sky turned from sunset to a deep blue, and I was holding hands with someone special. It was an ordinary walk on a January night, but that’s the point.

Generally, I only venture within a mile radius. This has put me in a bit of a bubble living in Denver, making me very familiar with the walls of my bedroom, the streets I always walk on to go to school, and the same handful of restaurants and stores that I go to on the weekends. I have become very routinized over the past three years, thinking there wouldn’t be a reason for me to go anywhere outside of downtown.

Even if it was just for a couple hours, my world grew slightly this past weekend. And it’s about time too, given that it’s my last semester. I have taken the train as far as County Line, so getting off at the Colorado Station wasn’t that far from downtown, but I would have never gotten off at that stop if it weren’t for who I was with on the train ride. And if I hadn’t gotten off at that stop, I wouldn’t have seen that bridge with the quotes, the building with the mural of a woman on it, the balconies of apartment buildings decorated in string lights, or the stars that are usually hidden by the city lights.

Yes, these are seemingly little things, but like the quote says, it turns out that they aren’t so little. I think sometimes we determine that after those moments pass, but there are also times where we know we won’t want to leave them. For me, it was the person I was with and the new sights I encountered three years after moving to Denver that made the night monumental.

I think everyone has those “bridges with quotes” moments where they can’t necessarily explain what made them extraordinary; nonetheless, those moments stick with them, and Saturday will be one of those nights for me.