While I was busy living my life over the last 50 years, I generally assumed that the little things were essentially inconsequential… “Don’t sweat the small stuff” and all that jazz. Scraped your knee? Meh… it will heal. Arrive late to a meeting by a few minutes? Accidents happen. Did someone push in front of you at the supermarket check-out? Perhaps they’re in a desperate hurry, or they are not a very nice person, either way, it’s no real skin off your nose in the bigger scheme of things. Maybe someone says something flippant, yet cruel, and so you remind yourself that their words reveal more about their personality than yours, and so you let it go. None of it really matters.
Except that it does.
No matter how many times you repeat “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” – you know in your heart that’s not strictly true. You now that if you get into a habit of being late to a couple of meetings, it could turn into all meetings, and you’ll end up as “that person” that is late to everything… one day everyone will start to assume (rightly or wrongly) that you are lazy or rude or indifferent.
A pebble in your shoe is not the end of the world, but it can feel like it, just as a tiny tooth can become all-consuming when it aches. A little sprinkle of salt might not make a big difference to a single meal, but it might change your health over a lifetime, whilst a single sprinkle of chili can ruin tonight’s dinner if you can’t handle the heat. Death by papercuts sounds absurd, and of course it’s unlikely, and yet… it makes sense to me on multiple levels.
From a more positive perspective, a grain of sand is so tiny – but add up enough of them and you’ll have yourself a beach. A dewdrop can hold the universe entire in its reflective orb. Brush your teeth every morning and over the years your dentist will thank you. Step by single step you can get to the top of Mt Everest or run the Boston Marathon. Write word after word after word, and by the end of the year you’ll have a blog with over a hundred posts, and if you keep going, perhaps you’ll have a PhD!
Nothing is inconsequential – no matter how small something seems – everything adds up.
I once heard someone say that if an event causes you to hold your breath, that moment is enough to become a potential trauma – if you don’t exhale.
If for example, as a kid you were asked to answer a question on the board and you made a guess knowing it was probably wrong, you hold your breath to see what will happen next. If the teacher says, “good try” then pats you on the back and moves straight on to ask another person the same question with minimum fuss, you’ll exhale: “phew! no one’s looking at me anymore – crisis averted.” If, on the other hand, all the kids in the classroom burst out laughing, and so does the teacher… well then… you might remember that moment forever. You could ‘hold the scars’ of that moment’s embarrassment, even deciding for life “I am stupid”, and (sub)consciously shape all your future actions around avoiding that humiliation from ever happening again. In a way – you hold your breath forever.
The way I imagine it is that if you repeat those ‘small’ moments often enough, you starve your soul, your cells, your very sense-of-self of oxygen and energy.
It’s the exact opposite of one of my favorite quotes by singer-songwriter George Strait: “Life’s not breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away.”
[Image source: GeorgeStraitQuote.quotefancy.com]
But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in half-a-century of living it’s this:
TWO THINGS CAN BE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME.
Having your breath taken away can be good OR bad.
When someone taunts you, belittles you, undermines your worth by pushing in front of you at the shops, or arrives late to all your meetings – know that it’s not inconsequential and neither are you.
What you do with that information is up to you in that moment – mindfulness is about paying attention, being curious about how it makes you feel and why, and understanding that you have a choice: react – or not – both are valid options.
Most importantly – breathe through it – if you catch your breath in disbelief or hurt, try to remind yourself to exhale – long and slow… do your best to let go of the negativity of this moment, for now, and hopefully forever.
Remember too that the scenario can be reversed – your actions can cause other people to catch their breath in disbelief or hurt. You can be the pusher-inner or the perpetually-running-late-person, the paper-cutter or the metaphorical pebble in someone’s shoe. Once you acknowledge the truth of this, do your best to reverse the situation… see what you can do to make moments that take people’s breath away in Good Ol’ George’s way.
You matter.
Your actions matter.
Nothing is inconsequential – especially you.
Take care lovelies, Linda xox
The Mindful Migraine 
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