Want to "Not Sweat the Small Stuff?" Take the BIG Overview!

There's an old saying that goes "don't sweat the small stuff — Note: it's ALL small stuff."

I'm sure there are hundreds of different interpretations of what that "small stuff" is, and another hundred interpretations of how to learn to not worry about small stuff.

In most cases, I've noticed about myself that I only start "sweating" when I get too deeply into the minutiae of everything.

I look out at the world and I realize that the New World Order could be all sorts of things, and climate change could be all sorts of things, and the political climate could be all sorts of things, and the future outlook for Covid could be all kinds of things, and the hidden alien agenda could be all kinds of things.

As humans, it almost seems like we are wired to worry about things, and what happens is that something comes along and it seems like it's big and frightening and weird and not comprehensible so we start digging into the details.

And yes, I know there's an old truism that goes at "the Devil is in the details." Trust me, I'm aware of that!

But when I step back and take the 50,000 ft overview, I invariably end up at the same place each time... which is that the fact that there are millions of different opinions about the minutiae of every single situation that ever arises, which amounts to little more than an indication that we don't actually freakin' know ANYthing!

You may think you "know" something, but what do you think the person who has the radically different opinion from you thinks they know? Do you ever even stop to put yourself inside their situation and ask yourself what they think they know? Moreover, what do you think they think of you?

As a student of psychology and The Human Condition, one of the things I've consistently noticed is that we generally hate to deeply question our own perceptions, lest we be forced to not only change direction, but also to look at something uncomfortable... such as the reality that we know far less than we thought we did, and perhaps what we thought we knew (and desperately clung to, like a burr in a storm) now makes us look like total fools.

Much of the time we create our own problems simply by initiating our own process of entropy.

I won't go into long boring detail about what entropy is and how chaos and everything from the smallest to the largest system in the universe works. Let's just leave it at the most super simple explanation we can: "shit falls apart."

What does that mean? Well consider, for example, that you have managed to gather eight kittens in one place for a perfect photograph. So you take one picture... but then a bird flies through the scenario and before you know it you've got kittens spread all over creation and the amount of work it would take to get those kittens back into the perfect pose again... well it's almost unfathomable.

Entropy could be described as those perfectly posed kittens becoming a mess of fur chasing itself around with the crazies!

What does this have to do with sweating the small stuff? What does this have to do with getting stuck down tiny rabbit holes of conspiracy theories, esoteric explanations and various other minutiae?

Well, because of the way many of us work — or, rather, because of the way our brains and minds work — we tend to obsessively end up focusing on just one metaphorical kitten and have no idea what the other seven kittens are doing. We just get too close.

However, when you back out far enough to where you can see all eight kittens again you realize that they all have their own thing that they're doing and that each thing those eight kittens are doing is within their little sphere of awareness and is — to them — equally important. Besides, who is to say that the single kitten you're chasing around represents the entire universe of truth? Can you honestly stand there and say that the kitten you are chasing and its behavior is 100% representative of the world?

See the dilemma?

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't pay attention to details, but it's important to remember that a detail is just that: a detail. Not the whole picture.

Alas, it's something we tend to very easily forget!

So, don't sweat the small stuff!

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-10-10 01:25 PDT
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