For a while, and by a while, I mean 3 or 4 weeks, I’ve been driving around with a stick stuck in my driver’s side windshield wiper. I finally pulled it out this morning. It’s about 10 inches long, maybe 1/8” in diameter, and it has a fork at the end. The fork is the part that stuck up into my view when I drove, irritatingly in my line of sight, vibrating in the rush of air, somehow not blowing away. Just stuck there.
Every time I drove somewhere, I was reminded that the stick was caught in my wiper, and I’d promise myself that I’d remove it when I stopped. And then I’d get to my destination, my attention would be focused elsewhere, and I’d forget about the stick until the next time. It bothered me each time, but not enough to stop the car to remove it. So there it stayed, in my line of sight, an irritant that I tolerated.
A few days ago, I was in my car, watching the stick’s frenetic dance to hold on, amazed that it hadn’t blown away yet. I asked myself once again why I still hadn’t removed it from under the wiper. It occurred to me that the stick was a metaphor for other petty annoyances in my life that I live with – sort of. I passively make room for them rather than actively remove them, even when the effort is trivial. I don’t think too much about them until they surface again and demand my attention. Then I wonder why I haven’t dealt with them. Like the stick. Stuck.
Of course, awareness doesn’t always solve things. Even with this insight, it took me another day to remove the stick from my windshield. As is so often the case, my mind got busy elsewhere while I was driving, so by the time I got to my destination, the stick was again invisible. Yesterday, though, I pulled over to the side of the road and removed it. It’s such an insubstantial thing, really. I don’t understand why it didn’t blow away. But it didn’t. And it bugged me for weeks.
I’m keeping the stick as a symbol for the things I tolerate in my life without thinking too much about them. The small annoyances and irritants that don’t rise to a level of need for immediate action, yet claim my attention again and again to no positive end.
So the bag of clothing sitting on my favorite chair, waiting to be taken to Goodwill… I think I’ll drop it off today. I’m holding onto the stick for a while.
What small annoyances and irritants do you want to remove from your windshield today?