Papercuts are the worst.
Well… not really, but you know what I mean. They hurt way more than they should and afterwards you can’t stop replaying the crime in your head. This tiny little incision that barely broke your epidermis, and sometimes is even hard to see… hurts like hell.
It steals focus from all else in your day. You’re acutely aware of it with every nearby or related motion. Picking up the next piece of paper seems like a deathwish.
Science says they hurt so much because they usually only cut through the top layer of your skin which contains a bunch of nerve endings.
Severing those tiny little nerves causes inordinate pain and leaves you wildly aware that you’ve severed them. They will not let you forget.
Well… until you do.
Think of the last time you had a papercut. Even if you can’t think of the details, I bet you can easily remember that discomfort.
Now think of the last time you didn’t get a papercut.
I don’t mean close calls. I mean just a time when you weren’t even aware of the fact you didn’t get a papercut.
That’s a little harder.
Further, unless you’ve been cursed with some really terrible bad luck, thin skin and a job sorting stacks of loose crisp paper in a paper factory, I bet you can’t.
Of course, there are cuts much deeper than papercuts. I’m not referring to those here. They need their own conversation to work through.
However, when it comes to the little things we get hung up on… the failures, the missteps, the hesitations, the coulda-shoulda’s, they act more like papercuts.
Demanding our attention and trying to make us live in fear of repeating our mistakes and feeling like the discomfort and regret will never go away.
But they do go away.
Life, fantastically and horrifically, is not static.
By design or definition, life cannot stagnate.
Things change constantly.
Most of the time, but not always, they change for the better.
We get a papercut.
It feels like it defines us for that short period of time.
Then it heals and we don’t even notice all the times we didn’t get one.
We should start noticing the times we didn’t get one.
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Thankyou for sharing 😁