Yesterday I shared with someone the short story The Death of a Government Clerk by Anton Chekhov

The story goes like this. This clerk, while watching a light opera, sneezed and noticed that a gentleman sitting in front of him in the first row of the stalls “was carefully wiping his bald head and his neck with his glove and muttering something to himself.”  He thought he had spattered the gentleman and must apologize.
“Pardon, your Excellency, I spattered you accidentally. . . .”
“Never mind, never mind.”
“For goodness sake excuse me, I . . . I did not mean to.”
“Oh, please, sit down! Let me listen!”
From then on, the clerk began feeling truly tortured by uneasiness and the thought that he had done such an unforgiving misconduct.  He was so driven by the thought that he repeatedly went back to apologize until he became such an obnoxious nuisance that the general shouted at him, “Get out of here” with a stamping.  Guess what, he died not long after that.

That someone thought the clerk was ridiculous.  I think the story reveals the mentality of some people and also tells the fact that our minds, if not occupied by important matters, are easily disturbed by trivial things and eventually are consumed and defeated by such ridiculous trivia in life.