I was astonished. I had just stepped into the bathroom when I heard my daughter’s voice through the door say "Mommy…Daddy let Sophie eat fuzz!"
This was true. I had let Sophie eat fuzz. Because I had made a quick assessment that preventing Sophie from eating fuzz would be more difficult than just letting her eat it. "It doesn’t matter," or so I thought…That is, until I overheard my daughter tattling on me – telling my wife I had allowed the fuzz eating incident to occur.
So what is this fuzz I speak of and who is Sophie and why should you care?
My thoughts exactly. Why does fuzz matter? Fuzz has taken a minimal role in my life. It never comes up in conversation. And why does it matter if Sophie eats it?
The problem with that type of logic is everything matters.
When someone says "it doesn’t matter" with regards to a small detail
or work left undone, I will habitually say to myself "everything
matters." Thinking something doesn’t matter is delusional – if only a
little bit. The consideration is how much it matters and does it
matter enough to make you want to change?
This may sound like perfectionist talk to some, but it’s not. Both
my computer desktop screen and my desk are cluttered 95% of the time.
Does it matter? Of course it does. It is distracting. It is more
difficult to find what I need when I need it. But organizing my
desktop takes time I have scheduled for other more important tasks.
As another example, many of the responses to my posts come from
people who point out my spelling errors. Does spelling matter when you
are sharing Da Vinci’s Streamwriting technique or the 10 ways to guarantee failure? You bet it does. I know it. Yet, I often skip the step of clicking spell-check. I get into a hurry. I can always go back and edit it,
I think to myself. You can imagine this leads to more work when
there is an error or problem. Going back and redoing always takes
longer than doing it right the first time. Most of us know this.
My point is not to take care of everything that matters. Since
everything does matter, we must pick and choose and make value
judgments. What I am suggesting is we all be conscious that everything does matter.
When you accept this fact, you can anticipate problems and note how you
will deal with them. In my mind if 1000 people love the article (typos
and all), but 7 people hate it because it contains typos I can live
with that outcome. So the spelling errors matter, but not enough to
delay getting information to the vast majority of people who want it
now.
Clothes dryer lint (fuzz) ranks very low on my priority list. That
is why I didn’t mind Sophie, our pet Yorkie, eating a little bit of
it. It was easier to let her eat it than for me to chase after her,
take it, throw it away and then wash my hands. Who needs that
trouble? Besides, at the time, I was making coffee.
My wife, having found out about my dereliction of fuzz detail, informed me this was not the first time Sophie had eaten dryer lint. The last time she did, she got sick and threw it up – along with her dog food. I am not one who handles vomit lightly. In fact, I
am not one who handles vomit at all. So upon learning this unsavory detail, I now have a new respect for fuzz and why it should not be
eaten.
Yes, everything matters…even fuzz.
