OPINION | Let’s not forget the little pleasures in life

Editor’s note: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso has been a contributor to Vanidades magazine for several decades. She is a specialist in fashion, travel, gastronomy, art, architecture and entertainment, film producer and style columnist for CNN en Español. The opinions expressed in this column are solely his own. Read more opinion pieces at cnne.com/opinion.

(CNN Spanish) – Today I would like to reflect on our lifestyle, because as time passes (although since I was a child I understood these things) I have realized that life – as it should be lived – is nothing more than a succession of “momentary” very special, that touch our hearts. And I mean that lovely sensation that is felt in the very middle of the chest, just like in the eyes.

And I use the diminutive, because they are very brief moments, very small. Emotions that last a second or two, being born like a lightning bolt within one, very spontaneously, and with it they make the spirit fly with a joy so inexplicable, so beautiful and so intense, that when I feel it I compare it to the state of nirvana that should be felt, or in the promised paradise.

I tell you this, because the more I stop to enjoy “the little things,” the more of them come to me. It is like unleashing an irrepressible cataract. And they multiply again and again, even if what caused this moment of emotion is something without much importance.

The more I pause to enjoy a phrase in a book, or bask in the pleasure of a well-done newspaper article, a beautiful image, a positive person — or just a sign of exquisite aesthetics, such as a cute design, a window of cute things, or a painting — I feel better and better!

(Credit: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso)

That is why I adore places – like Paris or Venice – where we find refinements of a thousand-year-old aesthetic in a thousand details. On a simple, well-starched string napkin. A gleaming white mug in an old 18th century cafe. A pole with a century-old lamp. An ancient arch in a historic neighborhood. And the fragrance of an old perfumery, full of crystals and polished woods and some very old and very feminine curtains of handmade lace. And the same thing happens to me in so civilized London, in the exquisite momentum that is the High Tea ceremony.

And it happens to me every time I put my feet in a museum, or in a public library, or in a gallery … Or when I read the newspapers on the Internet, and I get lost in the miracle that I find! The many wonders that they show me, for which I could stay without leaving home day after day, traveling through virtual visits to distant museums, or reading new books or architects who are revolutionizing the vision of the world we live in.

(Credit: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso)

For example, yesterday, the simplicity and at the same time the sensuality of the colors and the hanging fabrics of an image in a book of a painting by Claudio Bravo, perfectly reflects what I have tried to explain to you and without a doubt it causes me intense pleasure.

How is it possible to get bored in this wonderful world that we inhabit? Note that just writing about these emotions, it is in itself a divine moment in which I have enjoyed my life to the fullest in the minutes it has taken me to write this post!