You Are Someone’s Dying Smoke Alarm

I recently read the novel “Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel. And she had a line that stopped me cold. I re-read it a couple of times.

There’s a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones.

Let’s start by saying it’s simply a great line. Mandel certainly knows her craft.

But besides the structure of the line itself, it resonated with me—and maybe you—because it’s such a casual and yet spot-on observation.

It’s human nature to feel a low hum of irritation with the people we encounter each day. I’m writing this in a coffee shop and the person at the table beside me actually took a phone call on speaker.

Our days, in fact, are often a pileup of tiny annoyances. What Mandel has done, however, is place a mirror in front of us. While my oblivious table neighbor came across as obnoxious in that moment, how often am I doing things that vex others?

Your loved ones not only see you every day, but must endure your peccadilloes as part of their daily routine. No matter how much they love you, your little quirks—over time—torture them like the chirp-chirp of a smoke alarm’s dying battery.

It truly does require, as Mandel said, a generosity of spirit to not murder us in our sleep.

Remember that the next time you’re ready to lose it over someone chewing too loudly.

Dom Testa writes fiction and nonfiction, and knows a thing or two about being tolerated.

Find his published books here, and more of his work here.