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“Lifetime” sounds massive, like something permanent, carved in stone, stretched across decades. But most of what fills a lifetime? It’s small, repetitive and emotional. And, if we’re being honest, often ridiculous. A lifetime isn’t made of the big moments we think define us. It’s built from the things we choose to hold onto and the things we should have let go of five minutes ago. As humans, we remain mostly undefeated at turning minor annoyances into full theatrical productions.

The argument you had? The one that replays again and again in your mind, the one that, at that time, felt urgent, so important and worh raising your voice over? In the scale of a lifetime, it barely matters. It’s an asinine blip, a flicker of almost momentary insanity where emotion convinced you it was larger than it actually was.

And that’s the real problem. We don’t ruin parts of our lives with massive decisions, we chip away at them with small, unnecessary battles. There is often an undercurrent in our lives which tends to fuel our response to certain situations. At times, we find ourselves sick of various things, like being misunderstood, having to repeat ourselves, dealing with people who argue only to win, over-explaining the damndest simple, almost trivial, thing where the topic at hand almost requires a thesis. I know, I know, not everyone is going to get you, there’s a shocker, but it’s still not worth turning a situation into a courtroom drama. Then, there are those tiny inconveniences that come across like major crises like typos, emotional overreactions, holding onto being irritated much longer that you should and turning a 30-second moment into a 3-hour pissy mood. Of course, we have a tendency to expect people to think like we do which is a valiant strategy but rarely successful. Then, we allow our pride to keep an argument alive which is the least useful hill to die on. We often forget what actually matters and we need to think about those we care about, not whatever nonsense sparked that damn argument.

We need to remember that a lifetime isn’t just how long we will live. It’s how we spend our emotional energy while here. Each time we escalate something small, we’re spending a piece of that lifetime; every time we allow something to go, we’re protecting it. The worst part? Most of what we fight about isn’t worth the cost, regardless of how passionate we are about proving some point.

We don’t need to win every argument or correct every misunderstanding. Reacting badly to everything that irritates us is consuming. The most powerful thing we can do is to pause and think “Will this matter in a year?” If the answer is no, it likely doesn’t deserve another five minutes of your lifetime; nothing was lost by stepping back from that argument. If anything, a piece of your life was reclaimed from something that was never worth of it in the first place and ends up being a silly waste of time.

You never know that, if life lessons are extracted from your personal arguments, you might become emotionally evolved and that can be a dangerous path. Hell, people might start enjoying being around you! That moment you had where you stepped back and thought “What was that all even about?”, well that’s the good stuff and most people never get there. They just keep recycling the same arguments like it’s a hobby. Stopping to catch yourself and see things for what they are is how you quietly improve your life without announcing it to the world like a motivational poster. Just don’t expect it to be permanent because you absolutely will get annoyed again, feel right again, and definitely want to argue again. The difference will be that small voice in your head that goes, “Really? This again?”

And that voice is just the beginning.

From the Writer’s Workshop: Write a post inspired by the word lifetime. List ten things you are currently sick of. Write about a fight you got into that you were passionate about then, but that seems silly now.