Letting Go...

Lately (meaning the past few years), I have had a really difficult time letting go of insignificant things. I don't mean like throwing out a favourite shirt...what I mean is "the small stuff". I'm the sort of person who can sail through life's curve balls with a sense of ease. I haven't had many "huge" things happen in my life, but when I have, I go through them with a sense of calmness...my favourite saying is "Everything will be okay in the end - if it's not okay, it's not the end" and I believe that with ever fibre of my being.

That being said, it's the day-to-day crap that I sweat over and hang on to and fret about. Pet peeves and things that irk me seems to be a common theme occurring within this blog. It's these pet peeves and personal irks that I just can't let go of (I hate ending sentences with prepositions but I'm not going to take the time to fix that sentence). I'll give an example - over the weekend, we were at a wedding where I met an acquaintance's new boyfriend. Right from the start, this guy rubbed me the wrong way (and Mike didn't like him either - which says A LOT because Mike likes everybody!). Throughout the evening, this guy just kept doing miniscule things but it was driving me up the wall! I lay in bed that night re-running all the rude/insensitive things this guy did and it actually kept me awake. The next night, the same thing happened! While replaying these scenes in my mind, I was interjecting different instances where I would tell this guy exactly what I thought of him and somehow that started to make me feel better. Finally, after two nights, I told myself that this guy has zero effect on my life, I'm never going to see him again and I need to just let it go...and I did.

There are lots of times when an incident happens and I replay the scene in my mind over and over again - run ins with rude Superstore cashiers, confrontations with students etc. Each time I replay them, I think I remember them as being more serious than they actually were and I start to get more and more angry/irked. Like the example above, I always replay the scenes with what I would have liked to say. After a couple of "screen tests", once I have found what would have been my favourite response (not necessarily the best response), I start to let the incident go. While this may not be the healthiest way of dealing with "the small stuff", it generally works and after a couple of days, I've let it go. Considering that my alternative would be writing a nasty letter, I'd say I'm opting for the more mature route.

And so it "breathe in, breathe out" goes...