I cut my thumb a few days ago, right at the tip.

It wasn’t a gaping, horrendous, emergency room-level cut. It was a dumb slip of the hand as I hurriedly shoved the blade into the food processor — a little sideways slice that didn’t hurt much (although it did bleed impressively over a hunk of cabbage).

I washed the wound and rummaged through the cupboards to find Neosporin and a Band-Aid. Back in action, I went about pulverizing the rest of the cabbage for the unstuffed beef egg roll stir-fry I was making (highly recommended, by the way).

Why am I writing about this minor glitch in my week?

Because in the past five days, I’ve gained a new appreciation for my thumb. And, on a larger scale, everything else I take for granted.

Do you ever think about your thumb? It’s amazing how much work it does. My little injury was on my right hand, i.e., the one I use to write, drive the car, squeeze lemon slices into my tea, and so on.

I sat down to re-watch “Wolf Hall” on Prime Video the other night (because I finally worked my way through all three Hilary Mantel novels — highly recommend). But I couldn’t use my thumb to work the remote. I had to awkwardly stab at it with my pointer finger.

The next night, I poured vinegar over my french fries at a restaurant and got a spine-tingling jolt of pain when it slopped over my thumb. (Which I arrogantly thought I could take out in public without a Band-Aid. It turns out I was wrong.)

Writing? I struggled to manage the space bar. My bandaged thumb banged into places on the keyboard where it shouldn’t have gone. It confounded me because I suddenly had to think, piece by piece, move by move, about something that’s been automatic for decades.

Don’t even get me started about how hard it is to text (or do anything else on a phone) when your right thumb is swathed in a bandage.

In the scheme of the whole universe, a cut on one’s thumb is small potatoes. But it threw my whole week off, in a thousand little ways.

It also got me thinking about how fragile the balance of the world is, and how your life can be changed in a second — with one bad decision, one wrong move, one missed opportunity.

The job you didn’t take. The friendship you let fizzle. The one drink too many.

You don’t worry about cancer till you get a diagnosis. You rarely contemplate fire till your house burns down. And you try not to think about losing a loved one, because you can’t begin to imagine the hole they’ll leave when they’re gone.

Slicing your thumb open? Not a good move.

Reminding yourself that things could be a lot worse, and that you need to appreciate everything you’ve got, right now?

Charlotte is a columnist for The Times. You can reach her at charlottelatvala@gmail.com.