Becky Beissel

Before I get into this month’s column, I want to offer a little context about these columns in general.

When I write about a particular topic, it’s usually because something caught my attention. Sometimes I simply found it interesting. Other times it resonated with me, challenged the way I think, or reminded me of something I needed to hear myself. I share those thoughts because I figure there’s a chance they might resonate with someone else, too.

Over the years, though, I’ve learned that I don’t get to control how someone receives them. A reflection can be read as criticism. An observation can become controversial. Sometimes readers assume there’s a hidden message or a particular person or situation behind it when there simply isn’t. I can be thoughtful about what I write and clear about what I mean, but ultimately, each of us brings our own experiences and perspectives to what we read. How we choose to receive something is part of the equation, too.

Which, as it turns out, is rather fitting for this month’s topic.

I recently came across a story that has stuck with me. A man was talking about a restaurant job he had in college. One of the closing duties was "marrying the ketchup," combining two partially empty bottles into one. He had a coworker who routinely wouldn’t do it, and it drove him absolutely crazy.

He constantly came home after work complaining to his roommate about this coworker and the ketchup. One night, his roommate finally looked at him and said, "Dude, your world needs to get bigger." Oof.

The point of the story wasn’t really about ketchup, of course. It was about the amount of space something so insignificant had been allowed to occupy in his life.

I’ve thought about that a lot since hearing it. How often do we give relatively small things an enormous amount of our time and energy? Something annoys us, so we replay it in our head. We talk about it. We text someone about it. We look for validation that, yes, we are right to be annoyed. Before long, this relatively minor thing has consumed an entire afternoon.

Sometimes I think we almost decide to be bothered. Once we’ve determined that something is irritating, inconvenient or wrong, we start viewing everything about the situation through that lens. Even when it turns out not to be as bad as we expected, it can be surprisingly difficult to change our minds.

I certainly haven't mastered this. Earlier in my adult life, I had very little patience. Small inconveniences irritated me much more easily. I wanted everything done a certain way, on a certain timeline and preferably without anyone making the process unnecessarily difficult.

Then my world got bigger.

Motherhood, business ownership, loss, health scares, community involvement and eventually serving as Village President all expanded my perspective. Those experiences exposed me to more people, more viewpoints and far more significant problems. Along the way, I’ve learned that almost every situation has another side to it. People have different priorities, experiences, tolerances and ideas about what constitutes a problem in the first place.

When you spend enough time dealing with genuinely complicated issues, you begin to realize that not everything deserves the same amount of your energy.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about things or speak up when something is wrong. It simply means we might occasionally pause and ask ourselves: How much space does this really deserve in my life?

Our time, attention, and energy are finite resources. Every bit we spend being irritated about the metaphorical ketchup bottles is energy we aren't spending on our relationships, our goals, our families, our communities, something we can actually change, or maybe just enjoying an otherwise perfectly good day.

I still sweat the small stuff sometimes. I probably always will. But I'm getting better at recognizing when I do. And when I catch myself giving something far more attention than it deserves, I come back to the same reminder:

Maybe my world just needs to get a little bigger.