In Defense of Minor Obsessions

When Small Things Become Sacred Duties

It sometimes comes upon a man a stroke of insight, the full realization that he must fulfill a noble task which others may regard as silly or insignificant, such as braving a trip alone to a Washington, DC, Whole Foods at 5pm (if hell exists…) to buy sour cream for the chili he has just made, which he refuses to serve to his family without.

You, dear reader, surely have those small things which you refuse to compromise or concede. Don’t you?

I have many. Yes, you might chalk it up to my neuroticism or perfectionism. But I wouldn’t do these things if I didn’t believe that I was, at some level, saving the world.

G.K. Chesterton wrote about his friend who was afflicted with a jammed desk drawer day after day. His affliction stemmed from the fact that he thought the drawer should, and could, open easily. His view was entirely subjective and relative. While this friend was being made miserable by that drawer, he lacked vision.

“If you picture to yourself that you are pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy,” Chesterton tells him, “the struggle will become merely exciting and not exasperating. Imagine that you are tugging a lifeboat out of the sea. Imagine that you are roping up a fellow-creature out of an Alpine crevass…