I used to care a lot about whether my toilet paper faced the wall or not. I absolutely insisted that it face away from the wall, and held disdain for people who put it the other way. Looking back, I'm not sure why. I want to blame it on the universal propensity to form coalitions and something about how you seem cooler when you have strong preferences. But it's hard to imagine that mattering to me anymore. Why should anyone care about that?everyone has like a hundred really strong and totally pointless preferences
— Grognor (@Grognor) December 10, 2015
Most preferences are like this. Totally arbitrary.
The most important viewquake I've had was learning of construal level theory, or more understandably near/far thinking. You shouldn't use this blog post to acquaint yourself with this idea. You should just already know it. People often point out to themselves and others that the things they're getting concerned with are unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Similarly, they encourage not sweating the small stuff. Even though I don't know what people mean by grand scheme, and even though small things can be important, I generally approve of these practices because they are ways in which people cause themselves to think about what matters and what doesn't, and to prioritize.
Here's to being less petty.
Subs are still better than dubs though. And you better use the Oxford Comma.
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