I found myself thinking the other day that not very much impresses me anymore.
Which was a slightly depressing thought.
Have I really reached that age?
Have I seen so much, done so much and become so cynical that I now wander around looking at everything and thinking:
Yes, very nice.
I didn’t particularly like that version of myself.
And then, as I tend to do, I kept turning it over in my mind.
What did I mean when I said nothing impressed me anymore?
Because actually, when I started thinking about it properly, I realised that wasn’t true at all.
I’m quite easily impressed.
Maybe more easily impressed than I’ve ever been.
It’s just that the things that impress me have changed.
There are lots of things we’re supposed to find impressive.
The beautiful house. The expensive car. The important job title. The salary. The restaurant where you have to book six months in advance and somebody brings you a very small amount of food on a very large plate.
And I can appreciate all of those things.
Show me a beautiful house and I’ll admire it. Put me in a lovely hotel and I’m certainly not going to complain. I haven’t reached some higher state of enlightenment where I’d rather sleep in a tent because possessions no longer matter to me.
Absolutely not.
I like a comfortable bed.
But perhaps somewhere along the way I stopped being particularly impressed by the big, flashy things.
And because those are the things we tend to call impressive, I mistook that for not being impressed by anything.
I’d completely overlooked all the small things that impress me every day.
A youngster holding a door open for me.
A waitress noticing something before I’ve had to ask.
Someone remembering how another person takes their coffee.
An older couple walking along together and, without appearing to think about it, reaching for each other’s hands.
Something somebody has made that probably cost very little but took them hours.
Someone doing something kind when nobody else is watching and there’s absolutely nothing in it for them.
Those things impress me.
Actually, they impress me enormously.
And when I realised that, I smiled.
Because I haven’t become cynical after all.
My measuring system has just changed.
I remember going into a friend’s house once and seeing a beautiful arrangement of flowers in a vase.
Not one of those enormous arrangements that arrives at the door and requires you to reorganise the furniture to accommodate it.
Just a really beautiful arrangement.
“Those are lovely,” I said. “Who sent you flowers?”
“Nobody. I bought a few and arranged them myself.”
And I looked at them again.
I was genuinely impressed.
I’d known this woman for years and had absolutely no idea she could arrange flowers like that.
There was something else I liked about it too. She seemed almost surprised that I thought it was anything remarkable.
She hadn’t done it for anybody else.
She hadn’t photographed it.
She hadn’t announced that she had a talent for flower arranging.
She’d bought some flowers, spent a little time doing something she enjoyed, made something beautiful and put it in her home.
And I very nearly said:
“You should do this for a living.”
I actually opened my mouth to say it.
Then I stopped myself.
Why should she?
Why should something have to become useful or profitable simply because somebody is good at it?
She liked arranging flowers.
Surely that was enough.
She didn’t need customers.
She didn’t need a price list.
She didn’t need to turn something she loved into something she had to do on a wet Tuesday morning because somebody called Sandra wanted twelve table arrangements by lunchtime.
She just liked arranging flowers.
And strangely, I think that impressed me even more.
There was no audience required.
No reward.
No recognition.
Just pleasure in doing something well.
Perhaps that’s what I notice more these days.
Not the display, but what’s underneath it.
Time impresses me.
Thought impresses me.
Someone quietly noticing impresses me.
Being good at something without needing everybody to know you’re good at it impresses me.
Kindness when there’s absolutely nothing to be gained from being kind impresses me enormously.
And I think people have changed for me in much the same way.
I’m not particularly impressed by somebody telling me how successful they are.
Or how important they are.
Or who they know.
Or what they own.
I’ve lived long enough to discover that sometimes there’s an awful lot of flash and not very much underneath it.
Whereas somebody can say or do the smallest thing and I’ll think:
Oh.
And remember it.
Maybe that’s something that comes with getting older.
Not that we become terribly wise and stop caring about nice things. I certainly haven’t.
But perhaps after enough years, we get a little better at recognising the difference between impressive and meaningful.
We’ve seen expensive things that weren’t particularly valuable.
And inexpensive things that were.
We’ve met impressive people who weren’t terribly impressive once they started talking.
And very ordinary people who did something tiny that we remembered for years.
Maybe we also become more comfortable allowing ourselves to be impressed by things other people might consider insignificant.
We don’t need everybody else to agree that something is special before we’re allowed to think it is.
So I was wrong.
It isn’t that nothing impresses me anymore.
Quite the opposite.
I’m impressed all the time.
Just not necessarily by the things that are trying very hard to impress me.
And I rather like that.
Because it turns out I haven’t stopped being impressed by life.
I’ve just started noticing the bits of it that don’t show off.