I threw a mug of tea around a friend last week. Maybe 'threw' is the wrong word. It was more of a spectacular spillage, one of life’s slow motion moments.
My grasp wasn’t great when I lifted the handle. I should have pressed pause, stopped for a second, settled it down, and started again.
Instead I stupidly tried to carry on, battling the laws of physics, adjusting my grip in transit. Over-thinking. Over-complicating.
Gravity groaned. The white ceramic toppled away from me. An ocean of gleaming black tea washed over the tabletop. So much tea. The recovery operation ran out of napkins.
Then, just as we dried out and I relaxed (carefully) with a new cup of tea, my companion stated the obvious – as only can the best of friends:
"You know, it would have been okay if you'd just left it alone."
(Humble pie served with my fresh tea.)
But my friend was right. A minor, harmless accident caused by a major, common problem in life.
Too often, we fail to slow down our thinking and we overcomplicate the simple stuff. Our stressed approach to handling every issue can become our greatest challenge (even more than the root issues) - personal, professional, emotional, relational.
This is Mental Health Awareness Week, and the themed focus is on coping with stress. Some statistics suggest that three quarters of the population have felt stress levels that leave us unable to cope with situations.
Part of the difficulty is that many of us today are consumed with chasing perfection, controlling every element of life, comparing ourselves unfairly with others, petrified by fear of failure.
Crucially, we get a totally skewed perspective – overestimating our external worries like public reputation, underestimating the value of genuine love and support in others. We miss the importance of stopping, settling, and starting afresh. We end up trying to micromanage everything. And that’s when the mug topples and the tea spills.
In the modern world, we’re increasingly prone to letting anxiety and over-thinking create endlessly vicious circles of anxiety and over-thinking. Many of us over-think our lives to the extent that we’re barely able to think at all. Or even sleep. The basic function of thinking becomes stressful and unhealthy.
In our minds, we’re replaying every mistake. Preparing every new action. Revising every scripted line. Ruminating over every permutation of life and love and work. Wasting away time on ‘what ifs’, while forgetting that tomorrow is never guaranteed.
The big danger is that we lose the meanings within feelings and squander moments of life-changing opportunity; that we analyse every rational decision to the point of irrationality.
One solution is simply to press the pause button, taking time to step back for balance and perspective before we force through with our actions and our thoughts.
And, for example, realising that countless stars blinking in every night’s sky are merely light being reflected back off planets that are long since dead for millions of years. On average we’ll hope to get about 80 years. But we’re lucky just to get another day. Should we waste it worrying?
Two weeks ago I wrote about my parents’ experience facing into death, and witnessing the golden love they harvested in the autumn of their lives. Peace of mind truly lies in the warmest of loving hearts.
The reaction of readers was humbling. I got calls from friends going through identical experiences, whose clarity on life’s priorities is crystal clear. And many others, in similar circumstances, connected through notes and messages. Talk about perspective.
People from every background empathised with the meanings of the feelings in a way that should encourage immense hope about the underlying goodness within our society – despite its many problems, and all of our individual imperfections.
There are deep wells of love and burning beacons of light in the hearts of people all across this island – informed by their own lived realities of life and death. And these gifts provide limitless potential for broader social progress, individually and collectively.
We don’t celebrate or harness enough of the beauty and the brilliance that we each can bring to society and humanity, and to each other - even if that is sometimes impeded by difficult personal circumstances.
But our odds of collectively getting things right are vastly improved if we individually begin to rethink our approaches, stepping back for perspective, managing our stress effectively, and avoiding the perils of daily over-thinking.
And remembering that many things in life would be okay if we just left them alone for a wee while, and slowed down to steady ourselves. Like me and my mug of tea.
