Don’t Skip the Small Stuff

"Small is good, small is all." -- adrienne maree brown

In 1997, a book called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff . . . and it’s all Small Stuff was released. The first part of its title became a cultural mantra.

Twenty years later, adrienne maree brown wrote Emergent Strategy (affiliate link). In it, she wrote this: “"Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.)"

This morning in the fibromyalgia subreddit, someone posted the difference between “flair” and “flare.” We have fibro “flares,” not fibro “flairs.” If we had the latter, fibromyalgia would be way more fabulous.

Because it’s the internet, someone got mad that OP (original poster) was correcting others’ spelling.

That’s how I ended up here.

Flawed: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Therapist Richard Carlson’s book Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff was full of tidy platitudes that oversimplified life. Naturally, it became a bestseller. People love life solutions that are “fast, short, and direct.” Who I’m quoting will become apparent if you keep reading.

There were 100 two-page chapters with unspecific life tips for easier living. It was basically social media in print form. Here are some chapter titles with my snark to illustrate:

• “Remember that Everything Has God's Fingerprints on it”

  • You knew this was going to have religion in it, right?

• “Smile at Strangers, Look into Their Eyes, and Say Hello”

  • If another dude tells me to smile . . .

• “Relax”

  • Thanks, Richard! Never thought of that!

• “Take Up Yoga”

  • Ah, yoga. The cure-all.

• “Become an Early Riser”

  • Hahahahahahaha fuck you.

• “Lighten Up”

  • Hahaha fuck you.

One chapter is titled “Practice Ignoring Your Negative Thoughts.” Two later chapters carry these titles:

• “Listen to Your Feelings (They Are Trying to Tell you Something)”

• “Realize the Power of Your Own Thoughts”

As always with toxic positivity, you aren’t supposed to acknowledge your negative thoughts, but you’re supposed to pay attention to your thoughts. Do you think peddlers of this overwrought junk ever see their contradictions?

Then there’s this one: “When Trying to Be Helpful, Focus on Little Things.” There is no acknowledgement of the irony.

This is pretty much how the whole book reads. There are lovely nuggets useful for short-lived inspiration, but it’s lacking useful, practical lessons. I guess we can’t expect much from someone who wrote also wrote these books:

• Shortcut Through Therapy

• Don't Worry, Make Money

• Easier Than You Think: The Small Changes That Add Up to a World of Difference

  • Again . . . unironically

Enter adrienne maree brown

I don’t want to overstate adrienne maree brown’s work. I’m only 60 pages into Emergent Strategy. Despite being a wordy writer—game recognizes game, here—she makes a big impact in short span of pages. On point, one of those impacts is her observation of the small.

I’ve been chewing on that since I read it several days ago. It was like embroidery for several loose threads in my brain.

The Threads (not Meta, no)

Thread 1

My ultimate crush, Richard Hammond, has a tattoo that reads "micris fidelis." Hammond is short for a guy. He’s also fascinated by microorganisms and tiny things like gears. His car restoration business is called The Smallest Cog, which has a gear in the logo. His tattoo is a loose translation of “faithful to small things.” It’s also an anagram of midlife crisis.

I can relate to a lot of that, but none of it stood out to me much. Until now.

Thread 2

In another portion of the book, brown writes this: “Small-scale solutions impact the whole system.” This immediately reminded me of Symbolic Interactionism.

In sociology, there are three overarching theories to help understand shit. One is called Symbolic Interactionism. As sociology students, we were encouraged to find which of the three theories we liked most, and I always gravitated toward Symbolic Interactionism.

Here’s the TL;DR of it. Stick with me. I promise this won’t get overly academic.

Society is made up of several large entities like religion, education, and the economy. Within those large entities are smaller components like sacred texts, classrooms, and money. Within those are even smaller bits like verses, markers, and spreadsheets.

Makes sense, right?

The other two theories focused on how large entities (macro) impacted smaller things (micro). But Symbolic Interactionism went the other way. It looked at how the smaller things impacted the larger shit.

I’ve previously mentioned exclusive microsociology. I’ve since taken down the original post, but I mention it in this G3 post. It’s basically me minding me and mine. Instead of fixating on large structures, I’m focusing on the small stuff that’s immediately around me, and I’m excluding everything else.

Thread 3

I’m an English major. I taught writing. I’ve mentioned that a lot. I’ve also mentioned how hard it is for me to ignore some small details in how others use the English language. So, let me use that fibromyalgia subreddit example about the spelling of “flare.”

Someone focuses on a tiny detail like the misspelling of “flare.” Does it have a major impact on fibromyalgia? Hell no. Does it matter? Of course!

What it reflects is accuracy and education. Whenever we ignore misspellings, we ignore the larger thing those reflect. This is especially true if we repeatedly ignore it. We ignore misinformation and the erosion of education. We ignore the importance of facts. We ignore how a lot of small wrong things lead to big wrong things like doing away with the Department of Education and the cultural acceptance of things like “fake news” and “alternative facts.”

People roll their eyes at me when I say that because it’s inconvenient for us. No one wants to waste a lot of time worrying about if they spelled something incorrectly. They don’t want to sweat the small stuff. We’ve got big issues, and worrying about if we spelled “flare” correctly is a waste of time. Except it’s not. It’s ALSO indicative of big issues. If we don’t care about how a lack of education manifests in small, daily life things, then we also don’t care if our doctors dismiss our smaller symptoms that reveal fibromyalgia or any other illness.

And we do. We really, really do. We care about small things when they impact us. And like the book title gets right, it’s all small stuff.

But this is where people misinterpreted the title of that book. Carlson never wrote, “Skip the small stuff.” He wrote “don’t sweat” it. Meaning, don’t panic. Even he pointed out how important the small stuff was and how, collectively, small stuff mattered.

That’s what Symbolic Interactionism and adrienne maree brown are saying: “Small is good, small is all.”

Wanna know something obnoxious? That’s the direct quotation from brown’s book. It’s also a comma splice. I digress.

Thread 4

I’ve always been annoyed by the way people disregard smallness. Maybe this is because I’m short. However, I spent 20 years emphasizing the importance of small details to college students. For example:

A woman without her man is nothing.

vs.

A woman: Without her, man is nothing.

You can reverse the meaning of a sentence by adding or removing two punctuation marks.

We know small stuff matters. Move a decimal point in your bank account, and shit gets real. Misplace a single key, and life can get frustrating. Lose a piece of paper, and you may not be able to travel out of the country.

Small. Stuff. Matters.

Don’t Let Assholes Commandeer the Small Stuff

My mental tapestry of how small things matter is unfinished, but the image is becoming clear to me. This is my Signal to Noise.

Donald Trump is a master at small stuff. The dictator is not an idiot. Or at least he wasn’t always. The piece of shit knows what’s he’s saying and fully understands the power of every single word he says or posts.

I’ve often mentioned this in conversations, but here’s an example from the last time he was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Trump is highly cognizant of how he words shit.

Y’all know how much I hate his face, so if I’m sharing that, it’s important.

I don’t know how to impress on people enough why this small detail of Trump knowing his own words matters.

So, I’ll expand using some of the dick smugface’s tweets.

At first, Trump’s tweets rarely saw more than a hundred or more likes or retweets. The only ones that did were platitudes from his books. Funnily enough. What is it with white dudes and empty phrases? Oh yeah. Because the little shit matters.

Anyway, when he floated the idea of running for President, Trump’s tweets gained a little traction. But not enough. It wasn’t until he started attacking President Obama and China that things changed. His tweets got popular. It got him attention. That’s when you see the shift in content. All you have to do is look at his tweets before July 2011 and those after. The tone shift is obvious.

He went from self-promotion to self-promotion through hate, and he found his audience. Who later got him elected. Twice.

We’re repeatedly told social media numbers don’t matter. But I guarantee you that the popularity of his vitriol was encouraged by the small act of thousands of people hitting “like” got us where we are today.

Another example? MAGA didn’t start as MAGA. It started as “make America rich again” in a November 22nd, 2011 tweet. He changed one word, and it became what it is now.

Lastly, one of those early platitudes? He quoted himself once as saying this, “Keep it fast, short and direct - whatever it is."

It’s very easy to mobilize people when you realize the power of the details.

Why I Want You to Care about the Small Stuff

One thing adrienne maree brown is trying to get across is the power of the small act on large-scale harm. A friend of mine got me thinking about this. She talked about trying to focus on the little things she’s doing to make a difference and how it felt better than fixating on large-scale harm. That’s how brown’s book ended up off my TBR and on my nightstand.

The United States is going to shit, and we all know that. We see the bigness of this shitstorm, and we’re panicking because our umbrellas are tiny and not shitproof.

But we’re so busy drowning in the shitflood that we’re not seeing the tiny escape hatches of joy, comfort, and community. We’re not seeing how the little stuff can make a massive difference, and we’re absolutely missing how, collectively, the little stuff is what will get us out of this storm.

I want you to pay attention to the small stuff.

Stop skipping it because it doesn’t seem worth your time. I don’t want you to sweat over it. I want you to notice it. To gently correct it if you can. To give it the attention it deserves.

I’m not asking anyone to panic about every bit of waste they throw out, about every single word they say, or about trying to be perfect. I’m asking you to notice what you might’ve passed up. I’m asking you to stop settling for mediocrity.

Because the government, economy, healthcare, and everything else are being run by mediocrity.

Instead of shrugging over that misspelled text message, take the moment to make the correction. Maybe it’ll save time in miscommunication later. Maybe your phone won’t learn the misspelling that will frustrate you later. Maybe your careful text will encourage someone to take their time when texting too. Maybe it’ll lead to more people simply trying to communicate better.

Conversely, take a moment to let something small go like the thing your friend said that pissed you off. You’re not skipping it. You’re not ignoring your negative thought. You’re noticing it. But you’re also noticing that your friend is human, and their error or irksome statement is part of their whole.

You aren’t sweating it, but you aren’t skipping it. You’re noticing it, and you’re respecting how the small helps you see the whole, as in your friend’s humanity.

Think of it this way: Do you take any meds? I do. I take a lot of them. My smallest pill is my blood pressure pill. If I don’t take it, I get blood pressure headaches. I get physically uncomfortable. If I consume a lot of salt, it gets worse. Salt grains are tiny. Like so tiny. These itty bitty things, combined, can kill or save me.

I’m not gonna panic about missing my blood pressure meds or about consuming salt. If I forget my meds, I’m going to take it right away. Better yet for me, I have a pill organizer, and I prioritize taking it every single morning. That small act keeps me from stroking out. It’s a very small thing that’s keeping my whole in tact.

The little stuff is gonna save us. Using the small stuff to build big community will help us combat large-scale harm. Connecting the loose threads into the tapestry we want to make will give us the image we need to move forward. The piece of the puzzle. The kernels. The cogs. They’re where we need to focus to get us out of this shitstorm.

It’s not about perfecting the details. It’s about noticing their power.