My coworker Tanaka is the most serious man in Japan. He apologizes to the copy machine. Once, he apologized to me for the weather. For nine years, he has kept a resignation letter in his desk drawer, "just in case." Every April, he updates it. Last year, our American office sent us Patty. Patty is 61. From Oklahoma. She has survived three tornadoes, two teenage sons, and one husband. ("God rest him. He tried.") She sat next to Tanaka for a year. Week one, Tanaka hit "reply all" on an email meant for one person. It went to 312 people. Including a client. He turned the color of rice. He opened the drawer. Patty leaned over, read the email, and said: "Well. Nobody died." Tanaka had never heard this sentence in his life. He stared at her like she had spoken in tongues. Week three, he knocked his coffee onto a signed contract. He stood up. He bowed to the contract. "Hon," Patty said, handing him a napkin. "It'll buff out." "It's paper." "Everything buffs out, sugar. Give it time." Week seven, the projector died in the middle of Tanaka's presentation to our company president. In Japan, this is the kind of thing people quietly move to another city over. Tanaka froze. Patty stood up, said, "Well, folks, looks like we're doing this the old-fashioned way," and drew the entire sales chart on the whiteboard. Badly. With a cow in the corner. For no reason. The president laughed. Out loud. Nobody had heard him laugh since 2019. That night, Tanaka finally asked her the question he'd been carrying for weeks. "Why are you never afraid?" Patty put down her coffee. "Oh, honey. I've been afraid. I've watched a tornado take my roof off with my boys in the bathtub. I've sat eleven days in a hospital next to my husband. I know what afraid is for." Then she pulled a sticky note off the pad and wrote three lines. Is everybody breathing? Is everybody fed? Does everybody know they're loved? "If it's yes, yes, yes," she said, "it's a good day. Everything else buffs out." Tanaka stuck the note on his monitor. Something changed. Slowly. Month four, he only apologized to the copy machine twice. Month six, someone announced at the Monday meeting that we had missed a deadline. Silence. Then Tanaka said, very quietly, in Japanese: "Well. Nobody died." The whole room turned to look at him. Like a dog had started talking. By December, half the department was saying it. Our manager told a client, "It'll buff out." The client said it back. On Patty's last day, Tanaka opened his drawer, took out his resignation letter, nine years and nine versions, and handed it to her. She read the whole thing. She fixed two typos. Then she fed it into the shredder, and the two of them stood there and watched it go, like a small funeral. "Nobody died," Tanaka said. "Nope," Patty said. "Somebody just got lighter." Patty is back in Oklahoma now. The sticky note is still on Tanaka's monitor. It's faded. Last week, I broke the office printer. There was a little smoke. Tanaka looked at me for a long, very serious moment. "Is everybody breathing?" I said yes. "Then it'll buff out." So if you're carrying something heavy tonight, here's Patty's list. Is everybody breathing? Is everybody fed? Does everybody know they're loved? If it's yes, yes, yes, it's a good day. Everything else buffs out.