I miss my brother Joe. He was a big man with an even bigger heart. I think sometimes even he surprised himself when he would come up with something wise to say. He was a jokester, loved a good yarn, and the longer he could string you along, the happier he was. He was in his element. For the pain in the ass he could be, it seemed the older he got, the wiser, and even more lovable he became. In the last couple years I have missed him a lot. How I wish I could talk to him and get his unique perspective on things. But it does not take a large stretch of the imagination to hear his voice, and even conjecture what he might say.
Joe had a theory on life. (A theory? Give the man a few minutes he could theorize your ear off!) It was a simple theory. Here it is, Joe's two rules for living:
Rule Number 1: Don't sweat the small shit.
Rule Number 2: Remember, it is ALL small shit.
Thats it. Nothing groundbreaking there. It is something we have all heard at one time or another, and in fact, we are all familiar with the 1997 publication by Richard Carlson under a slightly different title, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff--and it's all small stuff" Only difference between the two men. Joe had been telling me his rules for living since the late 80's, and Richard Carlson made money by writing a book about it. But I am getting off the track here.
What would Joe say to me now if he were here? He would probably call me a jackass, and tell me to go after her. I'd probably spend some time in jail if I did, but if he were still here, he might visit me in the slammer, and ask me what I was thinking listening to him. Gee! Thanks a lot Joe!
But it is not really Joe that I wanted to write about this morning, it is the small shit he kept telling me not to sweat. Small stuff..... thats what it all boils down to. The little things. It is the little things about a person that we fall in love with.. It is the little things about a person that drive us crazy. It is the little things that piss us off. It is the little things that we fight over. It is the little things we miss when it is all over. Little things, in and of themselves do not necessarily destroy a marriage, but they do destroy the communication. Why? Because as Joe told me not to, I sweated them. I sweated ALL the little things. When there were no little things, I think I even made them up.
To be perfectly frank, I don't even know what we fought about for all those years. Little things. What time are you coming to bed? How hard is it to throw your empty cigarette packs in the trash? Why can't you take of your shoes in one room instead of one in the main entry, and one in the bathroom? Why can't you quit correcting my english? Why can't you turn off the lights when you leave a room? Little things. He said, she said. No wonder we drove each other crazy. The only thing we actually ever agreed on was that we both liked Bold III in the laundry. (Another little thing; surprise, surprise!)
But, in spite of our communication problems, when things were right between us.... What am I talking about? Things were never right between us. We fought like cats and dogs from day one, and it simply got worse as time went on. She bent over backwards for me, and time and time again, I took her for granted. I spent ten years tearing her down... and I wonder why I lost her?
Little things.
Little things I never really thanked her for. The first thing I remembered coming out of triple bypass surgery was her taking my hand and telling me I made it. I don't know that I ever told her how much that meant to me. It was a little thing. Her talking to me and keeping my attention focussed on her as they pulled my tubes out. I was terrified, but she was there to keep me calm. Little things.
Then there were the doctor's appointments where she wanted me to go, and I acted put out and told her she did not need me to hold her hand. Little things. (I should have done). Countless little things over the years. Perhaps it was one of the times she just needed me to listen, and not try to figure out how to fix her problem. Perhaps it was one of the times I wanted to go somewhere, but she would rather have stayed home. Perhaps it was any number of the little things I did that irritated her. At this time, it is all a moot point (perhaps it was the time I corrected her when she said "Mute" when she meant "moot"?) and there is nothing that can be achieved by dwelling on it. It is now another little thing.
The problem with little things is that they are important to us. They are OUR little things, and to us, they seem big at the time. It is only after mucking things up royally as I have done, and looking back on it that one sees things more objectively. We usually realize that the little things we were fighting over were not worth fighting about in the first place. I do not remember who it was that told me that I needed to choose my battles very carefully, to make sure that whatever it was was worth fighting about. Since I cannot remember, I probably wasn't listening at the time. Ah heck.... let the Credit go to Joe. He liked getting credit.
I think it is important to realize that there are both good little things, and bad little things. It kinda depends on how you see them. This is especially difficult for men I think. "What whiskers in the sink?" Some of us really don't see them, in the sense that it does not bother us necessarily, why should it bother our spouses? I think the same thing applies in reverse. "I always hang my bra in the shower rod... Deal with it!" It is difficult for us to make the paradigm shift necessary to see things from the other point of view. Not only men, but women too.... we all have a hard time looking at things from another perspective, even though we are looking at exactly the same thing.
I am not saying that this is right necessarily, only that it is normal. The little things get out of control, and the way in which we choose to deal with the little things is so much more important than the little things themselves. How we deal with the little things reflect on how we deal with the big things as well. In my case, I thought I dealt with the bigger stuff okay, but turns out that I was wrong. I could not see past my own nose to spite my face. There were some whoppers of some big things in my life both before and during my marriage. I did not handle those any better than I handled the little things. I would like to sit here and divvy out the blame on why the marriage took a flaming nosedive into the ocean, but I can't. I did enough of that while I was married. The truth is, the only person I can blame is myself. Sure, sure, it took both of us to build the marriage, and both of us tore it down... I know that, but the reality is that I alone shoulder the responsibility for how I chose to deal with things during my marriage, and I alone shoulder the responsibility for how I choose to deal with things now. She has her responsibility, but that is up to her to decide, and up to her to deal with. It is not my place to point fingers at anyone but myself. I made a lot of mistake. More than I probably am aware of, but at this point, I have no regrets about being married. None. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat, only this time I would try to think a little more before I acted, and especially before I spoke.
I choose to be different than I was before. In the past I would have been bitter, and angry over something like this. Oddly this time I am not. I simply made the choice to love her anyway. Sounds stupid, I know, but it worked. I suppose what it did was force me to focus on the positive of this, not the negative. And to think, she thought I could not change! I do hate change, but this one has been long overdue in coming.
There are two more little things that she might need to know if she ever read this.
Little thing number 1: I love her.
Little thing number 2: I am sorry.
