Ravings of a Long Haired Dude

The Little Things

I really relate to this song. It helped me realize something about myself that I never knew about before.

I live under a big load of stress all the time. I’m not going to go into the causes here. This is more about the symptoms.

I go through life handling all the problems to the best of my ability without showing much of a reaction to any of it. I keep my cool through all the worry and I do what needs to be done, or at least what I think needs to be done. I smile while I’m doing it. Whether it’s financial, health or whatever, I deal with it. I don’t even realize that anything is bothering me.

The problem is that stress is cumulative. It builds up to a critical mass. It might take a month. It might be a couple of weeks or days depending on the heaviness of what’s going on. Then all of a sudden I walk into a low hanging branch that slaps my glasses off my face, or five pounds of frozen meat falls out of the freezer onto my bare foot at three o’clock in the morning. Instant rage! I spit out a stream of the most ungodly cussing that ever befell an unfortunate set of virgin ears! I jump around and possibly kick a chair with the uninjured foot, which only makes it worse. All this happens before I know what is going on. Then I hear my wife from the other room yelling “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Listening to It’s The Little Things a few times helped me to realize that those minor irritations aren’t what is bothering me. It’s all the accumulated stress of the big hard things that I have to deal with. The little things are just a catalyst.

I don't really do New Year's resolutions, but I think it might be a good idea this coming year to try to deal better with the stress of those big things.

My wife Lesia and I had the pleasure of seeing Alice Cooper's Brutally Live tour in Knoxville TN in 2000. It included It's the Little Things.