When small things make you think...

about bigger things.

At the end May I went on a road trip and was worried about the fact that my tire, over time, was losing air. I took it to the "tire fixing shop" (I don't know the actual name of the place, though it's where I always take my car when I have tire problems, exclusively) and the guy that works there, let's call him Carl because he looks like a Carl, could not find any reason for a leak. He told me it could be the heat, blah blah blah. Carl aired up the tires and I was off for my weekend excursion.

As time went on, I would occasionally have to fill my tire up with air. Filling it up with air depended on how much change was in the ash tray of my car or whether or not I was close to Rebecca Lane (Free air at the Shell station...tell your friends). I would constantly have people telling me, "Hey, your tire's flat"..."Hey lady, your tire looks a little low"...etc. So, back to Carl before I left on my trip to Great Britain. Once again, trusty Carl with the pink "hanky" could not find the source of the leak and went on to balance my three remaining tires.

So, the morning I left for my trip to G.B., I parked the Jetta in my grandmother's garage, and because I did not want to keep up with my keys I slid them underneath the back right tire. Not thinking another thing about it, I left. When I arrived home at 5am, over two weeks had passed, and during that time my tire had lost more and more air. Now it was completely flat. After overseas flights, delays, and the longest lay-over ever in New Jersey (stupid NJ...I will never forgive you), the last thing I wanted to come home to at 5am after no sleep was a flat tire, but a tire that had gone flat on top of my keys...really?!

After miraculously prying the keys from beneath the tire, my mother and I stopped and aired it up. I had every intention of taking it back to Carl, but as weeks flew by, I found it easier to just air it up when it began looking low. I had to air it up about once every three days, but with work, I could never find time to take it to the "tire fixing shop" before they closed. It was easier to live with whatever was causing it to lose air, as long as I could turn to the "quick fix" of airing it up for thirty seconds and being good to go for another couple of days. I did not want to take the time to have someone remove the wheel, determine the problem, and fix it.

So weeks passed by and I just continued airing it up once every couple of days. This past weekend I knew I would be driving to Dallas, so I finally went to see Carl about my tire. I decided I should probably be "safe"...or something. Anyway, after about 25 minutes he finally found the source of a three month problem. After patching the tire and putting the wheel back on he came into the station and showed me what had been causing all of the problems. As I held the tiny nail in my hand, I started thinking about my life in general. I thought back to how much crap this tiny nail had caused...well, the nail and my laziness. Right now, I just want to focus on the nail though.

I thought about the fact that I always had to be aware of my tire, whether it had the correct air pressure or was losing air like crazy. I thought about how long the nail had gone unnoticed. I thought about the money I had spent airing it up. I thought about the trouble I had put poor Carl through. I thought about the frustration of having to figure out a way to get my keys out from under the flat tire. I thought about the the sheer inconvenience of it all....And then I thought about how this could apply to my life.

How many things in our lives lay dormant as they fester...in our minds, in our hearts? We try to mask it...put a patch on the problem...gloss over it. How many problems start off small, or are even considered small, but we later realize they have totally taken over...controlled our actions? Sometimes we tell ourselves it is easier to live with all of the small nuisances, as long as we don't acknowledge the actual root of the problem. We don't want to take the time to look at ourselves objectively and try to determine what is at the core. We would sometimes rather look past it than attempt to fix it, because then we would have to acknowledge that it was there...that there is, indeed, a problem. We can let the little things go unnoticed, but they always surface...nagging our minds. The nail was a little thing, just like some of the problems I find easier to push aside, but until we decide that there is something there that will continue to cause us bigger problems, it will not be fixed...it will continue to worsen until we acknowledge its effects.