All the Small Unnecessary Things That Make Us Miserable
The suffering can sneak in through the tiniest and most unexpected things. The story about the salt mill
I have this story about me and my husband that I keep on reminding myself and telling everyone who would listen. I guess it is you now. So here we go.
When me and my husband first moved in together we threw out a lot of our old things. Not only because we didn’t want to take all the old spatulas, boiling pots, and cutting boards with us, but also because we wanted to have things that belonged to both of us from the beginning.
We call this particular story “The Mill Epopée”
The ways we were used to keeping salt and pepper in our households differed. I used to have shakers, my husband kept all of his spices in containers. We came to an agreement that, as a symbol of starting our serious grown-up lives, we wanted to try salt and pepper mill.
It was the whole process.
I googled to find the most appealing designs. He watched YouTube reviews as if the happiness of our joint lives would depend on it. And in retrospect, in its own twisted ways, it actually did.
We ordered what seemed to be the perfect creation of the salt mill world. We waited for two weeks for them to arrive.
Unpacking was glorious. The mills were all shiny and promising. We celebrated by seasoning expensive beef steaks and had a royal evening.
It was three months and a half when the first one of us told it out loud. “These kind of sucks, don’t they?”
They sucked so bad
They were constantly jamming and they didn’t really grind. We had to buy finer salt for the mill to actually be able to do its job. It was bad. But they were also really expensive so we, I don’t know, let that fact keep us hostage, I guess.
It took us three and a half months, and, thank God, it wasn’t longer when we finally understood that we get grumpy every time we use them. To be precise- three to six times a day. At one point my husband started to call them his nemesis. Sometimes I would take the salt out of the grinder and crush it by hand. I’m telling you, it was terrible.
The breaking point
I don’t know what exactly shifted, but one Sunday morning we just got up and went to the shop. We picked out the simplest mills on earth. We took them home, threw our enemy mills out, and poured our new mills with salt and pepper.
They worked flawlessly. We still have them 7 years later.
On that Sunday morning, we cried a little. Why the hell we didn’t do it sooner?
But we also promised ourselves:
If something makes us miserable, it has to go.
Thanks, I choose my misery myself
Since The Big Teaching of The Awful Mills, we have spotted so many things in our lives that have had the potential to make us miserable.
Think about all the dresses and T-shirts that just don't fit right. All the uncomfortable chairs that need to be eliminated. Brand of rice that always overcooks.
It stretches out to people we need recovery time from. To plants that are beautiful but too high maintenance for us to handle. To kid trainings that we thought they needed but they hated them.
The thing is, there are going to be so many things in our lives that will make us miserable that we won’t be able to just get rid of. There will be work matters, family affairs, and social situations that will add to our state of suffering. It is enough as it is.
Why should we let any more suffering from those small, unnecessary things be present in our lives?
It is so important to pack ourselves with as much support, convenience, and joy in our everyday lives as we can. Because there is going to be that one thing we will need to deal with and I really wish for us all that there is no goddamn stupid mill on our table that adds to our misery that day.
Hi! Thank you for reading! I would love to hear your story about an unnecessary misery you got rid of in your life. Let's meet in the comment section!
