After 11 years, I noticed something different about my pillow cover. Amazing life lesson or need for glasses? Here is the story.

As I narrated here, I have made peace with my bed and recovered my sleep cycle. Since then, I am again BBF with my bed. Taken by this mood, I decided that my BFF needed new clothes. After all, it has been a really long time since she got a new set of sheets.

No, I am not sloppy, quite the opposite. Precisely because I am very careful, my things last forevere, but the end of my barely-sleeping phase deserved a celebration, in this case, a very fancy set of sheets.

What an upgrade! My bed looks like as it came from an photo session for an interior design magazine. However, when my new sheets needed to be washed, I resorted to an old set, but I feared the bed had already become used to a high standard. The solution was giving the old bed linen a special treatment by ironing it carefully.

And so I did to one of the pillowcases, but when I picked up the second one, something that had gone completely unnoticed to me all these years. It was just a small sewing defect, a silly detail, but the fact that it remained so long unseen, kind of surprised me, and the last thing you expect from a set of sheets you have for over ten years is a surprise.

Sometimes we are so used to the various objects around us, that many of its aspects become invisible. It is very easy to act on “automatic mode” and stop noticing things we always see, which is the equivalent of not seeing them anymore.

What colour are your dishes? And what about the bathroom towel?

In addition to this epiphany about “invisible” things sorrounding us, I had another surprise whie ironing (and you say chores are lame?). After being well ironed and arranged on the bed, along with new pillows (I told you the bed looks like part of a movie set), the old set looked basically as good as the new one, even with that newly discovered tiny sewing defect.

Yes, I still think I made a great purchase, but it was good to see the difference that a little extra care can make in the life of an object. Of course, ironing means extra work and it takes time, as well. And maybe, despite all your good intentions, some wrinkles will not come out, but despite all that, the result is worth it.

The same applies to people. How many personal and professional relationships could have been (and maybe can still be) saved, how many frictions and communication noises could be fixed with a little ironing?

Be seeing you!

G.F.