The Small Stuff

When I was a little kid going through my parents’ divorce, I think I had undiagnosed anxiety. I’d worry about everything. Holy crap, what if I grow up and become a homeless drug addict in New York City? (Nancy Reagan has a lot to answer for…) What if my house burns down? What if it’s all my fault? What if I’m a bad person? What if everybody at school thinks I’m dumb? My dad tried to help me process things with clever quips like “don’t sweat the small stuff” and “don’t make mountains out of mole hills.” I get the gist. And he wasn’t wrong. Mostly. I was taking really small things and blowing them out of proportion because they were things I could wrap my imagination around. The foundation of my family falling apart was so foreign I couldn’t begin to process it.

The enormity of grief and heartbreak at loss and death, whether its my family or innocent strangers living far away, is beyond my ability to fully grasp, integrate, process. Death is everything we strive against every day. We eat and sleep and laugh and love and fight like hell to live. And it comes any way. I talk about big waves and big feelings as an ocean. And so it is. Enormous. Vast. Powerful. Sure we can harness it, but it can be unruly and unmanagable and even devastating.

So how to move forward when the hurt is so big? I guess that’s when I start to sweat the small stuff after all, sorry Dad–but in the best possible ways I can. Watching the squirrel in my redbud tree cuss me out, seeing Seamus fall in love with every little girl that pays him attention, painting little rectangles of cotton paper with probably way too much watercolor paint, making bagels with my kid, having a movie night with my favorite gals, dancing to ZZ Tops’ “Legs”, texting my nearest and dearests, snuggling with my kitties, dinner parties with friends, knowing I made someone laugh.

My big brother, Todd, died last year on this date. His whole life he loved games, complex role-playing games. He knew the rules and the tiny nuances that made them interesting to players. Call of Cthulu became one of his very favorites to lead out. Mary shares the trait of being an excellent gamer and DM. (As I’ve only dabbled, I believe a Game Master leads out any variety of games while a Dungeon Master is specific to Dungeons and Dragons.) For both, it is the intricate personalities of the players, the questions, the world-building, the roll of the dice–little things that add up to the big thing. They both practice(d) a philosophy I embrace more and more every day. It’s the little things that matter the most. It’s the little things that make it all worthwhile. The little things end up being the biggest things. The little things give us tools to survive and navigate the really big ones.

TL:DR Life is short. The little things are the big things.