Hello, and welcome once more to Every Dawn, where every morning we get a small thought and try to take this into our day.
A few days ago, I had cut my toenails, and I had left a little bit of a sharp edge to one of them. But I didn't notice at that moment, and I just left home and went to the university. On the way, I already started feeling how this toenail was cutting into my flesh. It wasn't much; it wasn't anything tragic. I wasn't, you know, amputating any toes. It was just a little bit of a nuisance.
Over the day, I couldn't deal with it because, you know, at the university, we don't have scissors to cut toenails or anything like that. So, I was just doing my thing, having my regular day, and having my classes, but it became worse and worse. Not so much the thing itself—that all was perfectly fine—but just this little irritation, this little bit of pain whenever I took a step. This took away my attention, my concentration, and focused it on this thing. For the whole day, I was “suffering,” in a way, you could say. It wasn't real suffering; it wasn't real pain, but it was just enough pain to take away all the concentration that normally would go into my work, or into my classes, or my happiness from enjoying being out in the fresh air or looking out of my office window.
All these things, all these experiences, were suddenly made worse by having this pain in my toe. And so, this made me think how much these simple things can affect us. It didn't matter to me anymore what global warming was doing, or whether an asteroid was coming to hit the Earth, or even things closer to home, like whether my contract with the university would be extended, or even how well my class went on this day. These things suddenly did not count as much as this little bit of totally insignificant pain, which would be gone, you know, in a day because I would cut my toenail correctly, and then it would be gone. But it was there, this problem was there, and it was the biggest problem of the day, and it completely made every other problem seem totally insignificant.
And why am I saying this? Because I think that we often have this shift in perspective, which makes it difficult to see things in the right perspective because there is a right perspective and there is a wrong perspective.
The Stoics, the Stoic philosophers, say that whatever makes us unhappy in our lives as human beings is actually the result of having the wrong perspective. When you see your life from the outside, as if it was the life of someone else, then you get the right, or at least a better perspective on your life than you have, looking at it from the inside. From the inside, everything is distorted. You know, my toenail becomes more important than global warming.
When I drive with a car, from my personal perspective, when this car in front of me cuts in and cuts me off, and I have to brake, then I think that he's doing it to me. In the worst case, you know, I would think perhaps I have to take revenge and cut him off at the next corner, which makes things even worse because now this poor person doesn't understand at all what's happening, and he thinks I am aggressive. And if I see things from the outside, I get a much better perspective. If I see this person who cuts in front of me from the outside, I am to him like every other car is to me when I'm driving, which is nothing. But when I see other cars, I don't think of the people inside as people who think and see me and feel something. I see the other cars just as cars, as moving obstacles that I have to avoid hitting while I try to go where I want to go. I don't have a personal relationship to these cars or to their drivers.
So, as I see others, I have to realize that others see me. And when I see the importance of my toenail in, you know, the big scheme of things, who cares if my toenail is hurting? It doesn't do anything to anyone, not even to me. It's not like I'm going to die from it, or I have cancer or something. It's just a toenail; it will go away. I will cut it; it will be fine. So, it has no real significance. It is a totally superficial kind of disturbance that I should be able to ignore. I'm not able to ignore it, but I should be. I should have the state of mind where I can see myself and my problems in their real significance, and this would make life a lot easier.
So, when you go out into your life today, try to see yourself a little bit more from the outside, from the perspective of others. How important is what bothers you, really, in the big scheme of things? Is it as important as it seems to you, or perhaps it's not important at all? Perhaps you're just making yourself unhappy about something that is totally insignificant. Ignoring it would be better, not only for everybody else but for your own peace of mind. I don't say that I can do this; my toe did drive me crazy that day. But perhaps it's a good practice, perhaps it's something that we should be able to do more.
Anyway, think about it and tell me what you think in the comments. Thank you, and see you tomorrow. Bye-bye.
