ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD ZLATA FILIPOVIC, like so many girls her age, kept a diary in 1991.
“We gave ourselves a treat today,” she wrote one July day. “We picked the cherries off the tree in the yard and ate them all up. We had watched it blossom and its small green fruits slowly turn red and now here we were eating them. Oh, you’re a wonderful cherry tree!” Zlata’s words read like any young girl’s whimsical musings.
But this innocent summer activity held a much deeper meaning: Zlata wrote the diary entry in the midst of war in her hometown of Sarajevo. “I miss fruit a lot,” she continued. “In these days of war in Sarajevo, there is no basic food or any of the other things a person needs, and there is no fruit. But now I can say that I ate myself silly on cherries.”
That simple pleasure brought tremendous joy to a girl who witnessed brutality daily.
Simple pleasures can do that if we take the time to appreciate what the moment offers.
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