It’s been a tough week.

You know–one of those weeks where multiple things break, plans halt and change, arguments ensue, and the shit rises and officially hits the fan.

It’s been a week of little frustrations, piling on each other, making one, hot snarling big frustration that stands bow-legged, arms-crossed, and grins six inches from my nose–making it impossible for me to look at something else. To think of anything else.

And just this morning as I stood alone, leaning on my kitchen sink, looking out across the cold, gray backyard, exhaling and saying the most metaphorical cliche’ ever “when it rains it pours” in a way that was dramatically suburban as if no one, in the history of suburbia has ever dealt with these problems before.

I often tell you to endure and persevere.

I often tell you how to find meaning and purpose and a little transcendence among the grind of daily living.

I tell you not to wallow. To let go of the insignificant things. To focus of the real, meaningful moments that are sometimes so hard to find.

And I tell you why pursuing your passion, in spite of all the hardship and pain, is the most constructive way to avoid self-destruction.

This week, right now, I need to heed my own advice.

This week has been hard. Without drowning you in the minutia of my life–this week has been a string of frustrating few days. Of starts and stops.  Of deep breaths and quiet car rides. Of days in which you can’t wait to go home, climb into bed, and forget the pressing day ever happened.

The thing is–when we give these little, undeserving frustrations our limited attention, we sacrifice the attention we should be giving to deserving things like our family, our work, and our mental and physical well-being.

(As I’m writing this, the late afternoon sun is slanting through the window and is laying a warm hard across my hands and I’m shaking my head, disappointed by my own ignorance, my own self-absorption, and by my failure to acknowledge the good things right outside my narrow window…but such is life.)

I told you this a few days ago and now I need to tell myself– The problems are not the problems. We are the problems. 

We’re addicted to giving undeserving problems more attention than they deserve. Office gossip. The flat tire. The delayed flight. The broken cell phone.  And doing, so we deprive the good things in life the attention they deserve.

Minimizing your daily problems is hard. Really hard.

Modern life is packed with so many plastic intimacies and synthetic romances that we often fail to recognize what is real and truly important in the arc of life.

Now–if only I can take my own advice.

Be well,

Jay

PS– If you know someone who is having a tough week feel free to share this post with them.

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