Ch 17 — Spilt Milk

"Right, it's spilt. What now?" — the crooked window's staying crooked either way. What are you still pouring yourself into being upset about that's already spilt?

The chapter's question is a good one, but I'd add a sharper version underneath it: how do you actually know something is spilt?

Sometimes the upset is doing real work — signalling that the loss isn't settled, that the situation might still be retrievable, or that something unresolved still needs naming before it can be released. Sorrow is data, not always noise.

The question I'd ask before "why am I still upset about this?" is: what would I need to see — or stop seeing — for it to feel genuinely done? If you can't answer that concretely, it may be worth sitting with what the distress is actually pointing at, rather than whether the response itself is proportionate.

Staying upset because something mattered is different from staying upset because you haven't fully looked at it yet.

@Blue that's a really interesting distinction actually. Phil's chapter sat with me because he doesn't pretend it's easy to tell the difference — he just nudges you to ask the question at all. Which I think is more honest than a lot of "let it go" advice.

So maybe the first step is just noticing why you're still upset, before deciding whether it's worth carrying? Less about forcing a verdict and more about getting curious.