Documentaries show me how precious the ordinary is.

Turning on a kettle to make yourself tea.

Taking a walk and sitting on a bench.

Turning off the alarm clock, getting ready for work in a bathroom cluttered with products and a dirty mirror.

Simple, ordinary moments. Forgettable moments of “just getting by.” Our days are filled with them.

But with almost every victim to survivor documentary I watch, these are the moments documentarians use to show evidence of hope and healing for the subjects telling their stories on camera.

These are their turning moments. Their healing moments. Their freedom moments.

The simple ones. This leads me to believe maybe it’s in the minuscule that we can find meaning.

It’s in the drab that we can find deep joy.

I just finished watching the three-part docu-series, Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence telling the horrifying and bizarre story of how a group of college housemates fell under the spell a friend’s father, Lawrence Ray. Ray’s conspiratorial control over their friend group spanned over the course of years, pulling students from campus to a small New York City apartment where he inflicted ever-escalating psychological, emotional, and sexual manipulation and physical abuse, breaking down his victims’ grasp on reality for his own gain.

Earlier this year, Ray was sentenced to 60 years in prison without parole for “racketeering conspiracy, violent crime in aid of racketeering, extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, tax evasion, and money laundering offenses.”

The documentary tells the tragic stories of the victims, their torn-apart families, and their complex paths to freedom from the psychological hold of Ray’s conditioning.

As I watched this docu-series, what resonated was the simple scenes of survivors living life after their escape or rescue.

Cooking a meal in their new apartment.

Making a French Press.

Taking the subway.

These are scenes of people acting out the throw-away moments of everyday living, some of which maybe we resent.

Washing dishes.

Going grocery shopping.

The chores of maintaining a life and home.

But in the context of these stories, the ordinary of it all is profound. It’s a mark of freedom to be able to go to a grocery store and pick out what you want, cook it the way you want, eat it when you want.

A documentary has an element of performance, yes. Documentary-makers are sharing a real story by crafting it in a narrative the viewer can follow. They're likely staging the survivor’s home, getting the b-roll of these moments of normalcy, and instructing them to motion through these activities to aid in the telling of the story.

However, regardless of its performative nature, these scenes in documentaries always resonate with me. They inspire me to appreciate the details of the everyday more deeply.

I think a lot (and sometimes write) about the rich ordinary, finding beauty in the mundane, and closer paying attention, but if I’m honest, I’m not good at it. I want to be, but it’s so easy to revert to mindlessness as I go about my day—sweeping the kitchen floor, washing my face, running errands, returning a text. Just getting by.

I want to be better at it.

I want to pay closer attention.

These documentaries help me do that. They refresh my gratefulness for being alive. They orient my attention back into the beautiful simplicity around me.

Even if it’s as ordinary as turning on the kettle to make myself some tea, I want to be present for my life and appreciate it for all its minuscule details.