Hand Sanitizer On Paper Cuts

This came up for me a few weeks ago in a class I was teaching and I’ve been meaning to write about it ever since. I am definitely not taking the time to write as I should and it kept nagging at me, a mild example of hand sanitizer on a paper cut. Now for the bigger picture, what do I mean by hand sanitizer on paper cuts? Well have you ever discovered you had paper cuts because you used hand sanitizer? Thanks to the pandemic, most of you probably have. My biggest experience with this was back in my retail management days, we had these big signs that we had to change often. If you’ve been in a mall you know these signs, the ones in windows and door frames, that are changed to fit the sales or trends. They also cut you up, big time! Little invisible cuts everywhere. Well in this job I also had to use hand sanitizer, a lot. Let me tell you, it is very hard to not drop a million f bombs in front of your little customers when you start rubbing hand sanitizer on and realize that your hands have 1000 cuts of death on them! Some paper cuts are deep and noticeable, they bleed and burn from the beginning. Some, not so much. These little cuts that you don’t even notice until something snaps your attention right to them. This is true in our emotional and spiritual life as well, we are walking around with all these little paper cuts, blissfully unaware, until someone or something decides today is the day to bring the sanitizer.

It is really, really easy to blame others for our bad behavior, choices, or moods. Like blaming the sanitizer for bringing to your attention your cuts, instead of realizing you have them on your own. People tend to be the biggest deliverer of this painful mess, but certain situations and environments do this as well. So what do we do when we have this infuriating and painful realization? Well that is the million dollar question right there. The reason this came up in the class was someone dealing with a person that was just taking them to places they really hated going. Their first reaction, like most of ours, is to blame and hate the sanitizer. How freaking dare them come and show your ass that way?! Well I hate to tell you, but you can’t just be blaming the sanitizer, it is only doing its job after all. I see the logic in this argument, I really do. You were getting along just fine before the sanitizer brought up all this pain and frustration. You could just be on your merry way and not have to think of it at all. But could you? Were you? Should you? These are some important questions to ponder and while you’re at it, ask yourself another, what would happen if you never had sanitizer at all?

Well in a literal sense, the last 2 years has really driven home the importance of hand sanitizer. Imagine having all these cuts and your hands touching all kinds of dirtiness! How long until something ugly decides to wiggle it’s way into one of your cuts? Before you know it you’re infected and inflamed. Oozing and pussing and bleeding all over everything! Chances are you then have to work 10x harder to heal this little cut than if you had just dealt with it in the first place. The same goes for our spiritual paper cuts. Left unattended, they begin to fester and ooze and bleed. Before you know it, you are leaving a mess everywhere you go and your cuts are oozing all over people that never cut you. So you can pretend that your invisible little cuts are just fine and blame the sanitizer when it finds you, that plan may work for a little bit. You can feel the burn, curse the person or situation that brought it out, and then go back to pretending they aren’t there and you’ll be fine. Until you aren’t. Either you’ll always feel the burn every dang time you come across some hand sanitizer, and the universe will bring you tons, or you’ll carry on until something bigger finds you. Something or someone that uses those cuts as an expressway into infection city. Do you see what I mean? We need the hand sanitizer, it is the only thing aiding in our healing. If you let it that is.

So I encourage you, next time you have a person or situation that is just wearing you down, making you angry, triggering insecurities, or pushing all the buttons, ask yourself this: “is this hand sanitizer on my paper cuts?'“ Find the pain, identify the cut, then take the steps to heal it. This is the only way to solve the problem and move on free of more pain. And, when the sanitizer finds you, be grateful for it, it just might have saved you a limb.