For a long time now I’ve judged people only according to minute details. I am, alas, unable to await the ‘great events’ in their life through which they will ‘disclose’ their true selves. I am obliged to predict these ‘disclosures’ in the little things of life. For instance, in the walking stick handle, the umbrella handle which he or she selects. In the necktie, in the cloth of a dress, in the hat, in the dog which he or she owns, in a thousand unlikely incidentals all the way down to the cufflinks, actually all the way up! For everything is an essay about the person who selected it and gladly dons it! He discloses himself to us! “He wrote a good book, but he wore uncouth, engraved, unnatural cufflinks!” That says everything about him. There’s something rotten somewhere in the “state of his soul!” That a beloved lady betray us is not the most important thing. For fate will surely punish her after the fact with profound disappointment! But her first coquettish, fire-kindling glance, that is the salient detail! I can compete with him who betrayed me, absolutely, but not with him who directed a desirous glance in her direction! Little things kill! Fulfillment can always be defeated, but never anticipation! Therefore I hold fast to the little things in life, to neckties, umbrella handles, walking stick handles, stray remarks, neglected gems, pearls of the soul that roll under the table and are picked up by no one! The significant things in life have absolutely no importance. They tell, they make known nothing more about being than we ourselves already know about it! Since when you get right down to it, everything works by and large the same way. But the important differences are only manifest in the details! For instance, which flowers you give to your beloved. Or which belt buckle you pick out for her among the hundred options. Which pear from France, which grapefruit from America you bring to her house, which speckled brown Canada apple you select for her among the hundreds on display; this attests to many more attachments than the orgies of so-called love! Aesthetics, understanding, love must ultimately form a triad. One must be inclined to allow a symphony of ordinary life to resound in the sum of the “little things”! One cannot wait for big events to happen! All the least consequential things are monumental! The squeak of a mouse caught in a trap is a terrible tragedy! Somebody once said to me: the most terrible thing is a young rabbit dragged into a fox hole. The little foxes gnaw at him alive, slowly, day and night, with their needle-sharp little teeth! These are the tragedies of our existence!
Little things in life supplant the “great events.” That is their value if you can fathom it!