Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

I used to have more than a handful of pet peeves. But over time, and most likely since the passing of my mother three years ago, combined with the daymare that was the pandemic, and so many changes overall within and without, my pet peeves have dropped off significantly.

I wouldn’t say they’ve disappeared altogether. For example, people not returning shopping carts to the shopping cart bay, or to the front of the store is irritating, but it’s a small speck in the landscape. I’d rather return it to the bay or give it to an elderly person as I’m on my way back to the bay, than to stew about people not returning shopping carts.

I still notice when people ding my car with theirs and seemingly don’t care, but that really says more about them than it does about me. And it’s not something I can control. Thinking about things you can’t control is a waste of time. Others’ behaviors such as lying or cheating would still have the ability to overwhelmingly cause me to see red, but that is their behavior not mine. And it reflects on them not me. All I can do is not lie and not cheat and put my cart back in the bay and help the older person and shrug off the ding on my car. There are other things that I want to do with my days, and they don’t include throwing attention at things I cannot control. I believe that love and loss teach you what is important in life, and having experienced overwhelming loss of love and loss of the way life was at precisely the same moment in time, I can assure you from my standpoint, nothing else really matters. Let the peeves go, Jeeves.