Getting tripped up by the minutiae

Sometimes, the smaller the issue, the bigger I get tripped up by it.

Some years ago, I found a copy of the book, “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff” at one of the wholesale warehouses. I probably bought it more for its subtitle which is “It’s all Small Stuff” That subtitle really hit home. I knew deep inside, there were many more times I was sweating or getting worked up over the small stuff which I could just as easily have dismissed. I wasn’t doing that, however. I was expending an awful lot of energy getting angry, having sleepless nights or just plain dwelling on some of life’s teeny tiny moments which in the long run wouldn’t count for anything. Here’s an example of one which happened just recently.

My nephew, Seth, is one of the most brilliant persons I know. Seriously. Both he and his wife are PhDs in Astrophysics/Astronomy. I had the hardest time getting through both my high school and college Physics classes. My mind just doesn’t work that way. And, I am incredibly proud of him for what he’s accomplished. He teaches Astronomy at a major  mid-western university. I can only hope before I die to be able to teach something at a university level.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I started seeing some posts from him on Facebook which indicated he was in Sweden. I hadn’t heard anything about this from the family, so I wrote  a comment on his Facebook post asking why he was there. Seth responded with a url to a website about the Crafoord Prize. The website didn’t mention his name, and again not having heard anything about this, I asked him, again on Facebook, if he was receiving this award. At this point, I wasn’t really angry, I wanted to be proud of him for having achieved this honor if it was so. His second response was yet another url, this time pointing to a page at UCLA where he’d received his PhD.

Now, over something minuscule, I was pissed, and I mean unbelievably angry. I had asked, in my opinion, two very simple questions. Why are you in Sweden? and, Are you receiving an award? The answers I received made no sense to me. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Seth hadn’t just said, “(My) Grad school advisor won a mini-Nobel Prize in Sweden. She invited me to come to the ceremony as a guest since I was heavily involved in all the work that was being recognized.” I got this information first from his mother by asking her. Then, later, in a different exchange with Seth, he told me exactly this.

I consider myself a fairly average person, sometimes with better than average abilities. In this situation, I just wanted a plain, direct answer, which I wasn’t getting. Sometimes I forget, I can always ask for what I want, but I may not always get what I ask for. This was precisely the case here. What I wanted was a simple answer. What I wanted, was to be proud of Seth. I didn’t want to play Sherlock Holmes to decipher the answers I was given. And what resulted was the immature part of me taking over.

I privately messaged Seth on Facebook. What I said was, “Would you mind quit f*****g around with urls and give me a straight answer, please  The last post doesn’t really answer my f*****g question any more than the previous one. Thank you.” I know, and I think you know, there was no call for that language or that kind of anger. Both were misplaced. So, what happened? What was causing this behavior I had been working so hard to control to come out? That’s just it. I was working to “control” this part of me. I hadn’t yet really given credence to the idea there was a part of me, no matter how much work I do, will always be there to remind me I had spent a lot of my years being angry about nothing or something small. Sweating the small stuff. It would have taken no more effort to message Seth with “I’m just not understanding the urls. I really just would like a simple answer to my questions. If you are receiving an award, I want to be proud of you, and I don’t want to work at finding that pride. Please, I need your help with a plain yes or no.” I wouldn’t have gone to a place I don’t like about me. I wouldn’t have lost sleep. I would have really asked for what I wanted; clearly, cleanly and without all the drama. I went so far as to make up some other nonsense which, also, within a few days would prove to be false.

One of the things I was making up was I was being disrespected. That wasn’t the case at all. Seth, just being Seth, often times answers questions in a cryptic way. I haven’t had the pleasure of sitting in one his classes, but I can only imagine (I could get in trouble here, again) he does this in his class to get his students to think. It’s certainly what I might do to get my students to think. But that’s me. Two choices to pick from, the positive (getting me to think) or the negative (I’m being disrespected). Too often, far too often, I choose the latter.

Lesson to self: The stuff I make up in my mind is just that. The fiction stories are made from. Stop worrying about the small stuff and concentrate on what’s really important. Things like: How am I going to enjoy the latter part of my life? How am I going to be joyful and bring joy to the ones who are important to me? How am I going to be present in my own life as the caring, loving man I am as opposed to the frightened child I was? That last one is the big one.

How Am I Changing?  One day, one step at a time. One day, and one step at a time.