Ad Infinitum

At times I look at things in minute detail. Usually with a camera in my hand and that’s another story.

Other times I look at things on a scale so large the mind quagmires, smoke fritters out my ears in curly grey puffs and I mentally grind to a fiery, crumpled, synapse-overloaded heap. Bed is a great place to crumple since it doesn’t hurt quite so much as smacking my nose on the floor.

We all have experienced those days, those people or those events when everything just... umm... doesn’t seem to fit. They're not good days/ people/ events by our own account and it’s all just cess for the pool, right?

Whenever I run into a load of crap I’m not prepared for, or worse, a load of crap I probably should have been prepared for... you silly doink... I try to think in terms of universal meaning. That is, grow my thought process to such a large scale that anything that might be bothering me becomes a speck on the head of a pin seen from the perspective of an eye the size of a planet... meaningless, unrecognisable drivel.

Who cares who did what to who at the far end of the galaxy?

It’s far easier to determine how much something really matters when taken from the perspective of the entire universe.

We exist on an orb with seven billion other human souls. That alone is enough to temper any meaning behind a bad day. When I really stretch it out and start considering we are on a planet in a galaxy with trillions of planets in a universe with billions of galaxies each with trillions more planets, just how meaningful is it that I dropped and splattered a $%*&@ bottle of ketchup on the $%*&@ floor? How meaningful is it that someone said something inadvertently I took offense to? How meaningful is it that something happened to me thirty-two years, four months and six days ago (or yesterday, for that matter) when;

a) I haven’t seen him or her in thirty-two years, four months and five days and;

b) I’m not nearly the same person I was then anyway.

In the grand scheme of life altering proceedings, what happens today and currently feels larger than the entirety of existence usually becomes miniscule insignificance when viewed from the far-flung perspective of ground zero... the Big Bang. An all encompassing viewpoint from a distance of infinity makes any indiscretion I perceive to have happened to me a mere molecule of triviality.

I, like many, have held on to indiscretions others’ have loaded on my back for far too long. It matters not whether that indiscretion was intentional or not. Why should I be the schmuck carrying around their crap for the rest of my life?

Another little trick I use to figure stuff out is to ask myself a question. Is this event something that is going to change who I am? If the answer is “no”, then I get on with my life and let the cards fall where they may. If the indiscretion by someone else was unintentional, we talk it out calmly and I let him or her know why it hurts. If the indiscretion is intentional or occurs over and over, I simply stop being with them. Let them figure out why I'm not hanging around anymore. It’s no longer a rock in my packsack.

I do prefer to work things out when I can though. Just sayin’.

One note: It doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain or anger or sadness or angst. Of course I do. I may love that person who belittled me or ignored me or pushed my buttons. And... I don’t have to like them or be around them. Sometimes I know I need to just give up trying to please them and focus on pleasing me.

Of course, I could decide to become a self-loathing martyr carrying everyone else’s crap with me for the rest of my life and eventually lay on my death bed... alone... patting myself on the back for how strong I was to carry all the cess for my entire life. Hmm... that doesn't sound like much fun. 

It's my choice to carry the burden myself and wear it like a tattoo stamped unceremoniously on my forehead. All I really need remember is it is my choice to carry a badge of martyrdom or to release the indiscretion into the cosmos. A bad day will dissipate with all its meandering events and synthetic misgivings. Tomorrow is another day likely destined to become another speck in context of all millennia. Yesterday is already gone and I can do nothing to change it. So why worry about any of it?

My life is far to important to not be happy and to carry the burdens others have loaded on me... figments of my over-active imagination or not.

People will do what they do, there is little I can do to alter it and it is a lot healthier for me to stop thinking I can do anything to change them. For me, it's best I let them be who they are and continue on my merry way with a smile.

 

Now all I need do is remember where I put the frigging rags so I can clean the ketchup off the floor... and counter... and stove... before my honey sees the mess.

Namaste