A Picture is Worth 1000 Words, A Papercut, 418

A million different thoughts have been going through my head today. Which makes summarizing said thoughts into a witty blog entry somewhat difficult. A lot of weird things have been going on, and because of that, I simply do not know how to feel.

Feelings are complicated. When you're young, your vocabulary is limited and thus your feelings are simple. I'm happy. I'm sad. I'm angry. Granted, as a child, you often do not have the chance to feel other complex emotions, and I think it's better that way. As an adult, your vocabulary has grown, and now you have different labels: bewildered, irked, confused, embarrassed, ecstatic, elated, lethargic, bamboozled. The list goes on. But sometimes you feel so many emotions at once that you cannot separate one from another. You can't put your feelings in a box, they overflow into other boxes. That's how I feel these days.

When you get a paper cut, it hurts like a bitch, even though it's a small, shallow cut. Often, it doesn't even bleed. But you feel pain. The accompanying emotion is often anger, directed towards the source of the cut. You know it isn't serious, but it still bothers you throughout the day. And you wonder, how can something as annoying as a papercut come from something as non-threatening as a 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper?

No matter how small an issue is, if it affects you, it becomes a main source of concern, and no one has the right to say their problems overshadow yours. I'm not saying that a papercut is worse than getting into a car accident, or other bad situations. But it is something that affects me in the here and now, and, thankfully, a car accident (or worse) does not. It is not my present condition, and any feelings I have towards this imagined car accident will be just as imaginary. But the papercut, I feel.

Mundane, everyday things can cause pain when you least expect it. No matter how small these problems are, once they have become part of your life, you see them as significant and painful. For example, I can't type this entry without my finger hurting because of the silly papercut I got today at work. A constant reminder of small but significant problems.

Papercuts make me think. People have died today. Others have been diagnosed with cancer. Somewhere, an earthquake is happening. A child is starving in Africa. And here I am, upset over a silly papercut.