An eyelash

I’ve often wondered how other animals deal with eyelashes, or tiny objects that make their way into eyes.

Maybe my particular follicles have issues and I’m the only one that deals with this, but it seems that on a monthly basis I run into an issue where one or two of my eyelashes have fallen out and made their way directly onto my eyeball.

In those moments anything I’m doing comes to a complete halt. I’m shut down, incapable of doing anything except solving the issue directly in front of me.

How do deer or cows deal with eyelashes? I don’t know. But for me it causes complete incompassitation. I can’t focus on anything else until I deal with the thing capturing all my attention.

This is different from a squeaky annoyance, it captures all your attention.

Taking this into the realm of life, it’s ok to stop everything and fix the eyelash, remove it. Don’t try to pretend you’re fine, eyes tearing up and suffering.

Try to carry on a conversation when you have something in your eye. It’s obvious to the other person that something’s wrong, and pretending otherwise makes you both look silly. Stop what you’re doing and fix it. It will take two minutes and then you’ll be ok again.

When we spend too much time trying to hide our discomfort, pretend everything is ok, we end up become shells of ourselves, afraid to be real, afraid to share that maybe we’re not quite ok.

It’s ok to stop and fix what’s bugging you.