We all go through our daily routines thinking that everything will stay rather constant. Of course, everything changes, but the rate of change is usually slow. Hardly ever does everything come crashing down at the same time. If we lose our car, at least we still have a job. If we lose our job, at least we still have our significant others, friends and support system. If we lose our significant others, at least we still have everything they didn't take with them. Most of the time, we don't dream of the time when we lose something big, except possibly when we have an appointment with the insurance man.

But these are big things. If we lost something big, obviously it would be hard. It would be a big change. What about the small things. The little things that don't seem to mean much when they happen. What about those?

Should I have a longer introduction? The chorus in the back yells, "No!"

We hook all of our electric appliances into those two or three little slots in the wall. And they work. The electricity comes from wherever (somewhere in the ether, I think) and is constant except for the occasional blackout. We only think about electricity when it's not there. We don't worry about the thousands of people who make a living because of the juice company. We don't wonder if the company is making enough money to stay solvent. The only time we might raise our voice about it is when the bill comes every month and somehow we've used twice the amount of juice this month compared to the same month a year ago.

There are people who think about the people who work for the electric company, but it's usually not the executives of the company. A year ago, the heads of Enron knew they were fucking up. They knew that sometime soon the walls would fall and they'd be standing naked. So they allowed themselves to sell their company stock--but did not allow their fellow employees (albeit much farther down the ladder) to do the same.

The people who knew a year ago about the impending doom should be stripped of their assets and divide that money between the thousands of people who were corn-holed by the very company they'd worked hard for. It's not everything, but at least it would be something.

A few weeks ago, the University of New Mexico men's basketball team lost a close game in overtime to Gonzaga. It was close because Marlon Parmer, our point guard, had a career high of 30 points, and was able to keep the game close. But the team lost, and everyone pointed at Parmer because he missed an opportunity to win the game in regulation. The next day, the paper I read slammed Parmer and the team (which wasn't supposed to win the game in the first place) for losing a sure win.

Parmer was then put on suspension from the team. He hadn't broken any rules, gotten arrested or anything bad. It was a team issue. The next game, UNM barely beat a high school caliber Air Force team, scoring only 50 points. Parmer was forced to sit on the bench in street clothes. On Saturday, Parmer was not allowed to start, but was in the game from the sixteen minute point in the first half to the end. UNM beat BYU by 15 points.

Was this a stroke of master thought by the UNM coach to ultimately unite the team? By breaking it apart temporarily, did he actually fix some of the internal problems that had been bubbling over for much of the season? I'm not really sure, but the Lobos of UNM looked pretty good on Saturday.

Bad feelings, good feelings, observations we keep inside our chest because we don't want to break out of the normal simmer and cook. Eventually they have to get out or bad things happen. Stress, ulcers, nagging foot injuries.

"Why not go down with the ship?," we ask the heads of huge corporations that are flooded with tax breaks that would feed thousands of hungry families in poverty.

"Why are you torturing the fans?," we ask the basketball coach who does not enlighten the public with reasons for his machinations.

"Why do you think these things are connected?," the chorus in the back asks the writer who is still scraping crusties out of his eyes.

"Inner issues," I say. "Those things we don't think about because we're too busy thing about our own inner shit. That's why."

Because the things I've been thinking the most about this week really have nothing to do with barely anyone else--or even the things I wrote about. And there are a lot of people just like me. About six billion of them.

So, if even for five minutes, think about all those people who actually have to deal with the hard issues of life this week. As opposed to the rest of us, who will run the rail of our routines down to the minute.

Matt Worley sometimes ventures outside of his self-centered world.