If The World Ended Right Now, I Would Be Fine

My satisfaction from things in life is often from only small things. Car rides with my favourite music, enjoying a moment with a book, or seeing a cat on the street. Little things often makeup and add up to what makes a day good for me. Little moments are things that I often remember and stick with rather than big events in my life. There is something more valuable about small moments to me. However, there are rare times where little moments evolve into this incomparable feeling of satisfaction with life itself. These moments become sort of like “core memories” like from the movie Inside Out. Combinations of little things that make me feel so satisfied with my life. I have two distinct memories where I was completely satisfied with my life due to a small moment, which left me with a feeling where if the world were to end at that moment, I would be alright. Like if the world or the universe were to collapse on itself and swallow me whole along with it, I would have no complaints.

The first one is a moment with my sister. I’ll begin with some background on the relationship between us, it feels important. My little sister and I are two years apart, so we grew up pretty close. We always played together as kids, like the same things. When we were teenagers, however, there began to be this distance that came from how we developed in different crowds. We ended up being in different types of groups. She was more popular than I was and fit the roles of the “basic” girls that were seen as cool. I never fell into those moulds, ending up being one of the geeky English-loving nerds that spent her lunchtimes in the nerd club (I was the vice-president of that club). She worried about reputations and socialization, when I cared more for fictional characters than real people. We became starkly different people. It felt like we never fit together anymore, incompatible. We only grew back closer together when we both became adults. Finding new common ground in adult gossip and the worries of life. We now make sure to get lunch and update each other on our lives often, out somewhere where our parents cannot hear. We share our adult struggles with things like work and relationships and how our parents often hold us back. We were never open about our more personal lives to each other until now, where before it was briefly knowing what the other was sneaking around to do.

One day, we asked to borrow dad’s car. Some excuse was made, to drive somewhere to study or something school-related, I do not remember. I wasn’t important, the only thing that mattered was that he said we could take it. My sister drove and I peacefully watched the world pass by. We went from Surrey to Burnaby, ending up in Metrotown for a shopping trip. Dad would have killed us if he knew we had taken the car somewhere other than what he knew. We didn’t care, saying fuck all. We wanted to go shopping at our favourite mall. We were happy that day, conversing in the car about the latest and making each other laugh. Everything felt perfect, the thrill of a little rebellion fueling it.

The two of us have a tradition whenever we go to that Metrotown mall. There is a soft pretzel place there that we absolutely love that serves hot, fresh pretzels. That is always the first stop. The usual is two parmesan pretzels. We never skip it, scrounging up whatever change we have at the bottom of our purses to get them. I feel like the worker knows us from the number of times we have done this exact thing. This day after obtaining them, the heat of them almost burning our fingers, we decided to go back to the car to eat them. We would be away from people while eating, something comforting in this time of cleanliness and caution. We took the elevator back down to the underground parking lot. It was empty of people but filled with cars. It was just us and our pretzels, eating the savoury treat while laughing so hard at each other’s remarks and comments. Butter and parmesan covered our fingers, crumbs on our laps, wondering if the smell of baked goods would stick in the car and make dad suspicious. We did not have a care in the world.

I found myself thinking this thought for the first time. If the world were to end right now, I would be fine. Everything about this moment tickled that love for the little things in life. Sharing soft pretzels with my sister in a quiet parking lot. I told her what I was thinking. That it would be funny if the world ended on us right now. That I was happy at this moment. She laughed wholeheartedly. If there was an earthquake at that moment, where the cement ceiling of the underground parking lot collapsed and crushed us, I would be alright with it. There would be the physical pain of being taken in such a way, as well as the emotional worry of being an older sister being unable to save her baby sister from the demise. But the satisfaction of the moment before would have put me at peace. But that did not happen, life went on. We finished our pretzels and went back into the mall to start our shopping.

The second, is a moment with me, my sister, and my cousin while on a recent camping trip. It happened this past summer, where my family decided to head up to 100 Mile House for a week. Camping was not an option last year with the pandemic fears, so finally doing something like that again was exciting. Before the pandemic, me, my sister, and my parents always went camping every year with the families of my mom’s sisters, all of us gathering for a weekend at Cultus Lake. This year was something bigger, and me and my sister couldn’t wait. We got to basically live with our cousins, with who we are super close, for an entire week. That week was amazing. Going on adventures with those I love, exploring the lake our campsite was near and playing games and sports with my cousins all the time. But one night sticks out so strongly in my memory.

In the middle of that week, there was one night where the sky was completely clear. I, my sister, and our older cousin (the one we are closest to) found it so strange that the rest of our family was couped up inside one of the trailers watching a movie. So we got the idea to stargaze. We had dragged our chairs, ones that allowed us to lay far back, into a line side by side. The night was freezing. We ignored the cold, using sleeping bags and thick blankets to shield us. There were no lights for miles, being in a small town up high in the interior. We could see everything. The light pollution of the city night will never compare to what we were looking at. The entire sky was dark yet bright with stars. We could see the strip of the Milky Way and identified constellations that stood out so brightly. We all laughed so hard at how it took my sister way too long to find The Big Dipper, the big spoon seemingly staring right in her face when she couldn’t see it. We saw so many shooting stars, they were often small and quick in a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ fashion. But there was this distinct one, I remember it so clearly, where all three of us watched this one shooting star slowly move for about five seconds before it exploded into red light and disappeared. We all pointed at it and screamed in unison. I was in awe, from the entire situation too. I was feeling so cold, but we ended up staring at the sky for about two hours. My eyes burned from staring at tiny specks of light for that long, as well as the exposure to the night’s air. The pain was so worth it. It was probably one of the most beautiful sights of my life.

We had been chatting through the whole thing. And my cousin commented on how what if one of those stars started to get bigger, grow and grow until it came crashing out of the sky and blinding us with its light before it crashed down on us. I laughed, thinking that feeling again. That this was another one, a moment where I would be okay if something like that happened. I thought back to the pretzels in the parking lot. The only other time I felt like this. The second time blew the first one out of the water. Experiencing seeing the stars in their true beauty and glory was special. It replicated the simple satisfaction itch that loved to be scratched in me. Us giggling like we were children again when we saw a shooting star, wondering if there is life beyond those stars, laying in the freezing cold and not caring about it. I was so satisfied with my life at that moment, as happy as I could be during a week full of happiness. I will never forget how I saw the stars like that for the first time.

I value both of those events equally, even if one is more extravagant than the other. They have different aesthetics, that is the word I want to use. They just felt different, but at the same time satisfied the same pleasures in my brain. I doubt these will be the only times in my life where I would be okay if the world were to suddenly end. And I often wonder what the next one will be like. Will it be with the same people? When? How long will I have to wait for the next one? But I often tell myself that it will come to me, so no need to wait. Just enjoy life as usual. The surreal feeling will return one day.