Same traffic. Same lunch. Same email from the boss. Charlie feels every bit of it, and Kev’s face barely moves. One day, two best friends, two very different faces.
thatBB dictionary
a day in the BFF life
(noun phrase)
One shared day, two reactions. One friend feels everything, the other lets it pass, and both make it to bedtime.
Why little things bother us so much
Most of a day isn’t big. It’s traffic, a cold lunch, an email with a weird tone. None of it is a disaster, but each one lands like a tiny poke, and by evening you’re tired from things that never really happened to you. They happened near you, and you picked them up anyway.
What would a stoic do?
It is not the things themselves that disturb men, but their judgements about these things.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 5 (trans. W. A. Oldfather)
Kev and Charlie get the exact same day. The traffic doesn’t change and neither does the boss. What changes is the story each of them tells about it. Charlie isn’t wrong to feel things; she sleeps in sunglasses so nobody knows she’s tired. The point is that the face is a choice, and you’re allowed to choose it on purpose.
Try this: three moves for the next small thing
- Name the thing, not the story. "The email was short" is the thing. "They’re mad at me" is the story you added.
- Ask if it will matter at bedtime. If it won’t, give it one breath and let it pass like Kev.
- Feel it on purpose. If it does matter, feel it all like Charlie. Just pick it, instead of letting it pick you.
Same day tomorrow, probably. The face is still yours. meow meow, kev
