By Don Hall

A guy walks up to a huge mound of dog shit*. I mean, it might be human shit, the pile is so massive. It’s almost comical how big this heap of turd is except that the assault on the olfactory is insulting. The sight and smell is almost traumatic.

The guy is then faced with one of three choices:

• Sit down, burst into tears, and wail about the dog shit in his path. Spend the rest of his day, into weeks, squawking for anyone to hear about this horrifying, putrid feces in his way

• Walk around it and proceed about his business

• Clean up the dog shit then proceed about his business

The trouble with the almost non-stop airing of grievances, complaints, and stories of personal trauma is that eventually the guy walks up to a crowd of crying and wailing people. They are blocking his path and until he slides himself through the crowd to see that what they are in hysterics over is a massive accumulation of dog shit in their way, he has no idea how serious is the impediment.

Another guy is prone to stub his toe**. He stubs his fucking toe almost daily. It’s gets to a point where the guy is afraid to walk almost anywhere because he knows from experience that a stubbing is waiting for him.

He can:

• Start a petition to get all things on ground level—boxes, walls, table legs—banned everywhere so he can walk freely

• He can simply stop walking and level shame at anyone who walks in his presence

• He can buy some steel-toed boots and, while still stubbing, mitigate the pain aspect of it

A third guy decides to purchase a car***. He picks out the car. He’s happy with the mobility the car will provide him. He doesn’t have money for a car but he feels he needs one so he signs the GMAC loan papers that require not only payment in full but 39 percent interest on the loan. He decides it will be worth it as he will probably get a cushy job that requires he have a car. He signs.

Later, when he does not get said cushy job, he goes to the dealer and says he no longer wants to pay the loan back. The dealer laughs and says pay me all this money and the guy says but 39 percent is thievery. “You signed it, you owe it.”

The guy has three choices:

• Petition the government to wipe clean his loan while he still keeps the car

• Go into default and refuse to pay for the car and have his credit score take a massive seven-year nose dive. The car is repossessed

• Save his money and pay back the loan

Back to guy and the dog shit.

This time he sees it, chooses to sit and moan, and while he is shrieking at the horrors of poop, a pandemic hits the country. Suddenly the crap in front of him is less important, less urgent. He gets up, walks past it at a brisk pace to get inside and socially distance himself because the virus doesn’t give a fuck about his anxiety over the embankment of canine stool, cares not one bit for his existential pain.

The pandemic is a real problem. The dog shit was an obstacle but one he could ignore or clean up if he chose those routes. The dog shit became an excuse for not doing something rather than an obstacle to overcome.

Here’s the thing. Life is not fair nor is it easy. As we find things to complain about, as these things and issues amass, it only takes one incredible and devastating natural occurrence to remind us how limp and facile our demands have become.

The virus infects the Alt Right and The Woke. And every-fucking-body in between.

Sure. This is that sort of essay that exhorts you to “get over the small stuff and, whaddya know? It’s mostly small stuff” and maybe as you roll around in the scat of your own traumatic experience, you’re not really interested in hearing that. Fair enough. Maybe bookmark this for later and read it when you encounter a genuine problem. Maybe hang on to this for that day when you wake up and comprehend that the only perspective you can truly change for the good is your own.

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*Trump winning the presidency
**micro aggression
***a college degree