In the hustle and bustle of daily life, it’s easy to overlook the obvious. We get caught up in routines and patterns, and sometimes the most basic truths can fade into the background. But every now and then, a moment of clarity strikes, and we’re reminded of something so simple, yet so profound.
A user asked the forum, What obvious thing did you recently realize? Here are the common responses.
BUTTON ON THE KEYBOARD
“I bought a Logitech Wave keyboard and mouse combo about a decade ago. I loved them and used them both until they wore completely out, which took a long time. I used some other stuff for a while and recently replaced them with another Wave set.
They were the same, except for a tiny thing: the scroll wheel on the mouse worked differently. It spun freely rather than doing the soft ratcheting I used to. It wasn’t a huge deal. Scrolling through places like Reddit was much easier; I could spin it and let it fly. But it is bad for things that required precision, like swapping weapons in video games.
I’ve been putting up with it for like a month, and just today, I realized that the button below the scroll wheel isn’t just a middle mouse button. It switched the scroll wheel from soft click to free spin modes. I had no idea, and it made my whole day.”
HITTING ROCK BOTTOM
“Even after hitting rock bottom, you can still keep digging.”
“Rock bottom is also an elevator; you can get out any time before getting lower. Many people don’t know that if you ride it to the bottom, the first step out onto the basement floor is through a trapdoor, going even lower.
Do yourself a favor. As things are getting worse and worse, get off at a floor, figure out what the hell you’re doing and going, and find a lift back up. Go to meetings. See a counselor. Find help.”
GLASS ROSES
“Those glass roses in every sleazy gas station are crack pipes. Hidden in plain view my whole life.”
SOFT DRINKS
“Soft drinks are called soft drinks because they don’t contain alcohol. Hard drinks do.”
EARBUD STUCK IN THE EAR
“I had an earbud tip caught in my ear for four years, and I thought it was something else, like scar tissue.”
PIPE CLEANERS
“Pipe cleaners aren’t just for arts and crafts. They’ re also for cleaning pipes. I’m 35 and oh so ashamed of myself.”
PERIODIC TABLE
“The reason Lead is Pb on the periodic table is the Latin word for lead, which is the same root as the word for plumbing because the Romans made pipes out of the lead.”
NO CHEESE IN CHINESE RESTAURANT
“That there is no cheese in Chinese restaurant menus! As in, the Chinese don’t eat cheese. I Discovered this a month ago. Whoa!”
STRIPPER POLES
“Stripper poles rotate and are not fixed, and I always just assumed the dancers spun around the fixed pole through incredible body strength.”
PLANKTON
“I always thought it was so sad that plankton was served holographic food. As an adult who now has kids who watch SpongeBob, I realized plankton eat by photosynthesis, so plankton was photosynthesizing the holographic meatloaf.”
RAMADAN
“I always thought that Muslims didn’t eat for a month during Ramadan.”
BIRDS DON’T ELECTROCUTE
“Birds don’t electrocute on power lines because they have hollow bones, as my parents said. They don’t electrocute because they aren’t grounded.
I am a master electrician. It was a shocking revelation.”
I CAN BE HAPPY
“I spend too much time choosing to be negative when I could be happy. After a vacation, I had a significant attitude adjustment and applied to a school in the town I visited.
Suddenly debt doesn’t depress me cause I’m accumulating it for reasons I know are worth it. In the past few weeks, I’ve journaled mostly optimistic things, and today I realized I had spent over half of the journal talking myself into a deeper hole. I can’t unwrite it now, but that makes me value the pages I have left so much more. I don’t want my life to be a journal full of sad thoughts. I want to be happy.”
PILGRIMAGE
“The pilgrims from the American Thanksgiving were called pilgrims because they were on a pilgrimage of sorts.
I saw a news report in Portugal last November, and I told my wife, “Oh, you use the same word for pilgrims and pilgrims as we do in English.”
“Yes,” she replied, “because they were pilgrims on a pilgrimage.”
EDIT: I just assumed it was a quirk of language that the two words’ pilgrim’ were spelled the same. Pilgrim isn’t a word you hear often used to talk about people making pilgrimages, so even as an English person, I listened to the word far more often as a reference to the Thanksgiving story than as a piece of religious language.”
THOSE POTATO TALKS
“When I was knee-high, my grandmother would talk of arsh potatoes. I was in my 50s before I figured out what she said was Irish potatoes—red ones.
Had no idea….”
ALUMINUM FOIL BOXES
“I am in my 30s, and within the last few years, I learned that aluminum foil boxes have little tabs on the side you can push in to hold the roll in place.”
PROCRASTINATION
“Procrastination is what I now call resisting happiness. The more I put things off that have no physical repercussions tend to make me the most miserable, so now I choose not to resist happiness, and it’s made things easier to look at.
Ex. “spare those dishes, that’s tomorrow’s issue.” (For two days) I’m not too fond of dishes, and I’m honest with myself about that, but if I don’t do them, I know it bothers me because it makes me feel dirty, and I know it impacts my attitude, etc. So now I do them right after I’m done eating, but I’m happier to do them because I don’t procrastinate; I choose the option to be happy about the fact they are done and don’t need to be anymore. Hope it helps.”
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