I wanted to say a few things in response to Joanna Borns’ column “The little things are overrated” in the IDS on March 28.
While I respect her opinion for the point of our creation of artificial value, I’m not sure if Ms. Borns is being completely considerate of the “little things.” What makes little things special is that they don’t take over our life. They are peaceful pauses in all of our busy lives to step back and appreciate something that we often overlook. What makes them special is the personal aspect of each object. My little thing might not mean anything to you, but to me, it’s something great and delicate. You don’t have to let the little things take over, and I agree with Ms. Borns that no one should let them, because then they aren’t little anymore.
One of the least attractive parts of the article was the claim that a slippery slope, leading to an allegedly inevitable societal crash, comes with this appreciation. She claimed that “appreciation is just so vague,” but that’s precisely why the little things are great. What I value, you don’t have to, and it won’t lose value. We can’t create a standard of what is valuable because people are different. We individually create this value, but we create it for good reason. Whatever that is, it shouldn’t really matter to anyone other than ourselves. Humans value things based on our emotions, and almost anything that we come into contact with may have some sort of feeling attached to it, whether it’s pleasure, pain or even apathy.
The fact is, while these emotions may take us away from our societal duties, as Ms. Borns claims, we’ve also created these duties, and we value these duties in our commitment to participating in them. I think Ms. Borns would have a wonderful experience stopping to smell those roses and think about how our emotions shape our human psyche, and how those little things can mean so much more than just a leaf pressed in a book.
Alex Luboff
Freshman
