Do Sweat the Small Stuff
Visualize the water in a mirror smooth pond. Feel the stillness and peace inherent in the picture. Now please toss one very small pebble into the pond. Can you see what happens? Do you see the small ripples slowly moving across the entire surface of the pond, which is no longer mirror smooth? Of course, the bigger the pebble, the bigger the ripple, but please note even the smallest pebble disturbs the smoothness of the mirror.
This is a metaphor for your mind when you have a negative thought. When you realize what somebody has done and you don’t like it or didn’t want it to happen. And we know this, and we keep letting our ego do this, and we keep agreeing with it, honoring it. We keep tossing pebbles into our mental pond.
When we are correct, ‘they’ were incorrect or out of integrity; it is almost worse then if we are the one in error. Because being correct almost guarantees that we will then slip into ‘being right’. It is not even a half step from correct to be right and be right is a pebble, perhaps an even small one, but none the less, a pebble which disturbs the mirror, robs us of our smile, is the precursor to throwing rocks or even diving into our mirror smooth pond.
We may even be diligent at doing whatever it takes to live in the moment. But these little pebbles keep slipping through. Some are so small that we may not even notice for hours that the pond was disturbed and is now a raging storm. When we look back and try to find what started this storm, the pebble may be so small we miss it. Then we think: “how can this keep happening, I am living by the principles… I wasn’t in an upset”
But the truth is, even the slightest misstep away from total acceptance of reality, of the present, of what is going on, is a pebble. Honoring resistance even for a second is a pebble that may quickly turn into a rock. Being right that we are correct can be a pebble but usually turns into a rock quickly. Now we are veering off course but it is so slight we don’t even notice until we find out we are lost at sea, awash in memories of feelings from the past, or arguing with people in our mind (lawsuits). Yes, we will eventually see what is going on and set about clearing it up. Perhaps meditating or forgiving running our mantra. It is here that we lose precious time, cleaning up the mess, getting back out of our head.
Even more important, we lose our momentum; the flow of energy is interrupted. There is always the danger at this point the ego will convince us that inner peace is hopeless and we might as well give up and go play or binge or hide in sleep or sex or the Internet.
I noticed recently that my smile had slipped again and I wasn’t quite up to answering “how are you” with ‘wonderful’. I thought, there is something going on here… perhaps my ego has refurbished yet again and I am back in it. Well, that didn’t seem to exactly be it. So I looked closer and then I found the little pebbles, the little things that seemed so innocent and correct.
I shook myself and quickly re-chose the handful of little things that had undermined my smile and then decided that my new response to everything is “I love it”. Only this time I really meant EVERYTHING. I now go through my day with “I love it” running through my mind a lot. It still isn’t foolproof, but I got my smile back, and my days are again wonderful.
