“You know my method. It is founded on the observation of trifles.” – Sherlock Holmes in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”

Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the greatest fictional detective of all time and Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous character. It’s probably not too surprising as I find myself quoting Holmes that I tend to analyze everyday trivialities with the same sort of attention to detail in my own work. After all, even the tiniest clue, even if seemingly insignificant, is still a clue. And, when you’re in the business of tracking criminals, even the most clever perpetrator is likely to miss something to give them away.

Many times in my life I’ve intentionally acted completely oblivious or pretended to not be paying attention to what someone was saying. In reality, I noticed everything around me and actually heard every word that was said. Of course, there are other times when I completely shut out the entire world around me and choose to be alone with my own thoughts. I have a strange knack, much like Holmes, of knowing when something is relevant, and when it’s not.

That’s not to say I’m anywhere near Sherlock Holmes level in making deductions. But I have come to some seemingly premature conclusions throughout my life that eventually turned out to be shockingly correct. My mistake was often turning others onto the fact that I was onto something too early. But Holmes, correctly and wisely, would keep most everything to himself until the case was practically solved. 

Holmes repeats the sentiment of this quote on multiple occasions. There’s also another quote, often tied to Arthur Conan Doyle himself, “I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.” In fact, Doyle himself was quite the active reader, and there’s little doubt that just like Holmes, he filed away trifles to become the basis of not only Holmes adventures, but his other writings, too.

Whereas Holmes makes lots of mental notes, I prefer to take copious written notes. Only recently did I create a good system of retaining notes in a useful and organized form. My notes are boiled down to what I’ve been up to today, what I’m reading, and what videos I’m watching. Every thought I have can fit into one of those three buckets. Many of these thoughts, at face value, are “trifles” as Holmes would call them.

So, why are “trifles” – things that have little value or influence – as useful as they are to Holmes? Why do I also feel there is nothing more important than trifles? Well, in the course of Holmes adventures, the trifles usually are what get Holmes on the right track and tie together loose ends. If you’ve ever watched true crime shows like The FBI Files and Forensic Files, though, the same Holmesian methodology is used by actual criminologists and forensic scientists. Such a deduction strategy is used to solve real-life cases that would’ve been impossible if not for the tiniest seemingly unimportant thing. 

Of course, I’m far from the first to connect Holmes to forensic science; after all, Conan Doyle himself was a major influence on the emerging discipline in his own time. But, only after reading through the excellent DK Big Ideas Book on Holmes did I fully come to appreciate the true meaning of trifles. These things Holmes refers to as trifles are, in fact, not really trifles at all, but things that the vast majority of people would overlook. 

Many times someone will make an odd word choice or do some sort of behavior that seems inconsistent in my own life. Mostly, no one will think anything of these inconsistencies; but, I know better that they are signs of them being up to something. Frequently, it turns out they were doing something underhanded. That’s because I understand the importance of things that most people would pass off as a fluke or unimportant. It turns out that trifles, in a Holmesian sense, truly are much more important than they would first appear.

While the idea I’m about to tie in here comes far after Arthur Conan Doyle’s own time, it would not surprise me if Sherlock Holmes himself agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” That is to say, the arc bends because truth is persistent. What we call trifles are the small, inevitable traces that reality leaves behind, available for those astute enough to find them and, in doing so, pull that arc toward justice.

Now, yes, Holmes is not always successful; he actually does fail, which is entirely intentional on the part of Conan Doyle. Unfortunately, Conan Doyle didn’t live up to anywhere close to 1968 when MLK uttered these words. Still, had Conan Doyle been alive to write another Holmes adventure, it’s possible that some form of this quote would’ve found its way, at least in concept, into one of these unwritten tales.

It’s my belief that this alignment towards justice is not an act, but a law; a fundamental fact that truth, in the end, is more durable than falsehood. These trifles are proof of that durability. Yes, Sherlock Holmes adventures are entirely works of fiction, but it continues to amaze me how trifles solve real life criminal cases today, and even in my own life, my attachment to trifles has pointed out or when some trifle is overlooked by most which leads to a seemingly unexpected outcome that I saw coming, or trifles that give away when certain people can’t be trusted.

Do you believe that the universe is structured in a way that truth can never be fully hidden, allowing those wise enough to find the trifles to ultimately enact justice? Conan Doyle certainly seemed behind this idea, even if it wasn’t ever explicitly stated by him or anyone in any of his stories. It took nearly 40 years after Conan Doyle’s death for this concept to be uttered in such beautiful words by the Reverend King Junior. Still, I think even in the life and times of Sherlock Holmes, this very idea was on display. Thanks to what others may call trifles, true justice is able to be served, at least if the right people just happen to come along and know where to look for them.

~ Amelia Desertsong