Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
I recently saw this You tube video of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in his wrestling days where he would ask someone a question & before they could answer, he would get in their face and shout: “It doesn’t matter!” This made me think of a saying that my first girlfriend in high school told me, which I have to a greater or lesser degree lived by since then. The saying is: “Don’t sweat the small stuff…and by the way, it’s all small stuff!”
For some reason, this video stuck in my mind and every time I subsequently found myself in a situation where I felt some tension/frustration or some level of dissatisfaction with the situation and wanted or wished it were different, the image of “The Rock,” up close in my face shouting “It doesn’t matter!” would pop up, followed by my standby for all challenging situations: “Don’t sweat the small stuff…and by the way, it’s all small stuff!” It also led me to thinking about this simple but beautiful adage in a broader context.
I was practicing Buddhism for a brief moment in my life and I learned the term “Kleisha,” which means mental affliction. I recognized at the time that most people’s lives were a perpetual “Kleisha,” or as Henry David Thoreau wrote in “Walden Pond,” “men lead lives of quiet desperation.” It is as though each of us are experiencing a particular circle of Hell vividly and elaborately created by our own minds.
You may find this proposition utterly preposterous, but if you have a child, you’ve no doubt been in a situation where the child felt that their life was unraveling and coming to an abrupt and inglorious end as a result of some event. However, from our perspective, what appeared to be a cataclysmic event to the child was in fact completely trivial and we lovingly attempted to reassure them that everything would be okay. If you don’t have children, I’m sure you can think of at least one friend whose life is filled with drama and every event is raised to mythic proportions and our advice boils down to some variation on the theme of “this too shall pass.”
There’s a spectrum where on one extreme everything is filled with drama. We have certainly experienced this in high school where a pimple was a major issue; or a person looked at us the wrong way; or so and so said this or that. As we got older, it was the person who cut us off while driving; or someone bumped into us on a crowded train; or cut ahead of a line. The examples are limitless.
On the other end of the spectrum, I have the image of someone sitting in half-lotus floating above a crystal lake that is so still that it appears like a mirror perfectly reflecting the blue sky and passing clouds. All thoughts and events are experienced in the same way as the clouds and blue sky, arisings of Consciousness passing overhead and casting a reflection on the crystalline lake, but do not perturb its stillness. In between these two extremes, we live our lives.
What’s interesting is that we each are blind to the living Hell we have created for ourselves. We truly believe that particular events that occur in our field of perception are personal affronts to our very existence and consequently must slay those windmills more valiantly than Don Quixote. We also tend to surround ourselves with others on similar circles of Hell who are slaying similar windmills, whether it be for moral support or validation. Consequently it is incredibly difficult to escape the particular circle of Hell we have created for ourselves and more often than not, it boils down to “grace,” a blessing to be able to open our eyes, shed another veil, or simply turn on the damn light so that we stop bumping into the furniture. We have all had those moments of grace, or “Ah-hah” moments when we look back and can’t believe we could have possibly thought or behaved in a certain way, but then simply stumble into another contiguous circle of Hell until we have the good fortune of being pimp-slapped by grace into another “Ah-hah” moment. Hence the phrase “turtles all the way down.”
For me, the adage “Don’t sweat the small stuff…and by the way, it’s all small stuff!” has guided me through innumerable circles of Hell, and more recently, I have come to really understand that yes, it’s all small stuff. I am certainly not asking anyone to agree with me but am simply sharing a perspective, a feeling, that cannot be validated objectively except by stepping away from one’s very own and, although unwittingly, cherished circle of Hell. I write “cherished” because at every level, we actually believe that our self-imposed circle of Hell is the true and sole existence. Similar to those prior to the third century who believed that if they sailed too far in any direction that they would fall off the flat earth, or those on Flatland who live in two dimensions and cannot possibly accept the perspective of someone who is visiting from a reality of three dimensions, we cannot see our own creation for what it is — a delusion, a “Kleisha”- and move on. More over, even when we have the blessing of being pimp-slapped by grace and those black-out sunglasses that we were wearing at night finally fall off our eyes and we can miraculously see our surroundings for what they are, we often easily accept at that juncture that it was utterly ridiculous to fight “those” particular windmills but then just find other more elaborate ones that are worthy of our attention.
What happens if we were to recognize that all the ripples on our pristine still lake are caused by our absurd battles against windmills or imaginary dragons? How would we react to someone if we clearly and deeply understood that they are wearing a blindfold or a virtual reality headset and although they appear to be swinging their imaginary sword in your direction, you knew that in their virtual simulation, they were fighting dragons or windmills? Would you take them so seriously? Hence the second adage that I live by: “Everyone is doing the best that they can with the resources (or lack thereof!) that they have at that particular moment.”
With the blessing, or grace, of this understanding, it all indeed becomes small stuff. Everyone is immediately forgiven. Even when I forget all of this and lose my temper and react to someone who is out to slay windmills or imaginary dragons, it remains a single drop that hits my crystalline lake at its point of contact and does not take on the drama of the growing concentric ripples that then become waves and return as a grand tsunami that knocks me on my butt. (This begs the question: Is there such a thing as an insignificant tsunami? The answer: Ahhh! Yes if it is relegated to where it originated, the mind!) With this grace, blessing, understanding, that single drop is enough to remind me in that situation, with my reaction of responding to a windmill slayer and temporarily entering into their drama/virtual reality illusion, I too am “doing the best that I can with the resources (or lack thereof!) that I have at that particular moment.” Hence there are no ripples, waves or tsunamis. All is forgiven.
This is true compassion and it began with the grace of being able look back on all the windmills that I have so valiantly and courageously slain, the illusory scars that I have collected and was so proud to wear as evidence of my epic journey and show to anyone- including my future, wiser, kinder self- who would dare to suggest that it was ALL in my head, in my elaborate imagination and all just another circle of Hell that I created to fill the allotted time I had in this simulation called life. With this grace, this understanding, I see that these two simple adages- “Don’t sweat the small stuff…and by the way, it’s all small stuff!” and ”Everyone is doing the best that they can with the resources (or lack thereof!) that they have at that particular moment”- bear the keys to our liberation from all “Kleishas” and circles of Hell. They are not the solution, but rather the path.
The ultimate question with which I am still grappling is the following: Does this mean that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is an enlightened being disguising himself as a wrestler and actor and dropping these wisdom bombs in a vernacular that we can understand? Obviously the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Ramana Maharsi, Jed Mckenna, and many other sages have tried in their own ways to help us and have all, in their various ways, to show us the light and with rare exception, failed miserably. For those of you who are ready to object and label me as a heretic, I ask you a simple question: Where are the hordes of human beings who were able to hear the teachings of the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Ramana Maharshi, Jed McKenna, etc, and became enlightened? Wasn’t that their entire point? It appears that “The Rock” has picked up where they left off and distilled their message that apparently and in retrospect have been undecipherable to us mere mortals into a sound bite that doesn’t leave us scratching our heads: “It doesn’t matter!”
I am an emergency physician, writer and a lover of life. The purpose of this blog is to share my ideas, experiences and perspectives as they relate to Consciousness, and as they evolve. Consciousness encompasses everything in my life, your life, the world, the Universe — in other words — EVERYTHING! As the great Shaman Don Diego used to say: “It’s not the most important thing, and it’s not the least important thing…It’s the ONLY thing!”
Check out my novel: “The Twin Flames, the Master, and the Game”! It’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Balboa Press.
