Tiny Cracks of Life

This morning I noticed there’s a crack alongside my table. Yes, my new table. The one that I spent quite a hefty percentage of my salary on has a crack on it. It’s not quite noticeable, not really. Not unless you sit on my chair and intentionally look for imperfections. It runs on the right side of my table, around ten centimetres lengthwise and two centimetres deep. I’m pretty sure it won’t affect the overall performance of this table being a table, but since it is brand new, I was still caught by surprise when I first saw it.

What puzzled me more was the fact that I was not angry. Or sad. Or anxious. Or any other type of emotions that this kind of experience would have evoked out of me. Typically, I would have been stressed out, trying to find a way to fix this issue. But, I didn’t. I haven’t.

Instead of lashing out or crying over this crack that seemingly to appear out of nowhere, I didn’t feel anything; I don’t feel anything. There isn’t really that much for me to do. It is not a puzzle to be solved. It is not a problem that requires a reaction. It literally just a crack on my table. I even forgot about its existence around five minutes after seeing it the first time.

This got me thinking, what with this stream of New Age Pop Psychology everywhere—going on about facing your fear, acknowledging your trauma, treating your childhood wound—I wonder if there are some past issues that we don’t really need to address. Those experiences happened just cause. No other reason than just having us to learn some lessons. There are not mysteries to solve or generational trauma to be dissected or sob backstory to understand the underlying motives. We do not need to relive every single cracks of our lives in order for us to move on from them and to accept that they did happen.

Because sometimes it gets too much having to understand, know, learn, accept, and move on from those tiny little cracks of life. Yes, they are there, but they are also not on the essential part of you. You still live, function, breathe, laugh, scream, consume, sleep, go out, dine in, purchase stuff, read, sit in the most mundane meetings ever, doomscroll, and other snippets of life. That being said, I’m not condoning not working on your bigger past issues. But, I do believe in living your life, thriving in every sort of moments, not just surviving.

I’d like to end this by saying that I’m getting the hang of it: acknowledging and being indifferent with all those minuscule life cracks. Everything that happened should happen and there is no other way around it. I’m still not sure, though, about my insecurities and how I perceive myself. I think I still need to work on that part of me since I am inherently faultlessly inarguably riddled with so many insecurity issues that I am not even sure I know how security feels like.