The Anxiety of Small Things

‘…it’s the continuing series of small tragedies

that send a man to the

madhouse . . .

not the death of his love

but a shoelace that snaps

with no time left . . .’

Charles Bukowski.

I think Bukowski has a point; it’s the shoelace that snaps with no time left that will be our ultimate downfall. Bukowski was more than aware of the cumulative effect of those unpleasant, irritating encounters we face each day. It isn’t necessarily the major life changing events that break us, but, rather, the daily setbacks or just plain bad luck; the flat tyre when we’re late for work, the coffee spilt on a new white shirt moments before an important meeting, the competing deadlines, the minor failures and the tasks we’ve been putting off for too long. This is not to suggest that the big things are’t important or don’t matter because they most certainly do. Losing Vanessa, my long-term partner and mother to our young son, was the single most devastating thing to have happened to me, but our capacity to bounce back from such events is hardwired into our evolutionary history and each and every one of us has the capacity to overcome, even though there are many bumps in the road.

Psychologists make the distinction between major stressful events and what are known in research as daily hassles. Coping and recovering from severe adversity is what we generally refer to as resilience, even though the very term resilience can mean different things to different people. Our ability to cope and adapt to the small things is conceptually different to resilience and has been labelled buoyancy in certain circles, most notably, education. This distinction is important, I think, because it allows us to narrow our focus and concentrate on the events that could impact our ability to cope. For me, it’s the difference between losing Vanessa and forgetting to charge my phone, of facing the prospect of raising our son, Ethan, on my own and having to juggle single-parenthood with a career; they are related in some ways, but while one hits you in the head like a sledgehammer, the other chips away at your foundations until you topple.

In 2015, ten years to the day after Vanessa died, I toppled.