๑۩۞۩๑ hideaway ๑۩۞۩๑

i woke up yesterday with a sharp pain in the tip of the middle finger in my right hand. with groggy and puffy eyes, i squinted at it to see what was causing the stinging. and again, i squinted. much to my indredulity, i had a splinter. and my splinter was not a miniscule piece of wood, not glass, not a tiny metal object, but hair! yup, human hair. (well, i sure hope it is!)

so i decided to tackle the problem head-on, just like i do in life. it was causing me pain, and i simply had to get it out. it was lodged so deeply and snugly in my finger that i couldn’t, for the life of me, pull it out using my bare left hand. so i took out my miniature tweezer (the one that comes with the swiss army knives) and started pulling. oh mercy me! the more i pulled, the more it got stuck. and the more i tried to dig for the end of the friggin’ hair, the more i unnecessarily pushed it down.

it was more than a nuisance, really. for it sent me into a fit. and launched me into a constant state of unease. it hurt, too. so i picked up my tweezers again, and dug and dug. i skinned my fingertip raw, and blood and finger fluids oozed out of it. but still the hair was steadfast in holding its place.

so i ignored it (but tell me, how can one ignore nagging pain?) until i got to the office, where i discovered that it was extremely difficult to type on my keyboard. so it has inhabited the realm of my consciousness for the most part of the day, and has brought me discomfiture. it’s annoying that something that small badgered me that much.

my officemate said that i should just let it be, and it will come off out of its own volition, although it might take a while. since it’s foreign, apparently my body will just reject it in due time.

so, based on this seemingly mundane incident of having a tiny bit of hair lodged in my fingertip, i started to delve into life and its quirks. one may juxtapose this experience with the experience of having problems and irritants. IMHO, problems should be confronted, not eluded nor circumvented… definitely not ignored. and sometimes, life’s irritants (which we think are problems, like i thought that bit of hair was) just go away in their own time. we just have to let nature run its course, and accept (and sometimes endure pain) things as they come.

so when are these setbacks just irritants, and when are they real problems? when will my intervention count, and when should i just shut up and deal? this is the kind of wisdom that i seek.

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ps. as of this writing, that piece of hair is still lodged in my fingertip.