Gazing in the Mirror

January 5 - Life Can Be Irritating Sometimes

If you get frustrated by some of
your family, focus on the good aspects
of your relationship and attempt to
overlook the irritations. Then give
thanks for everyone who plays a part
in your life.
~ Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Self-condemnation and personal distrust; ...
is morbid and detrimental to our welfare;
... which might be classed as one of
our worst mental diseases.
~ Ernest Holmes

Yes it is true that sometimes I am just crabby. It happens. It's not really how I want to be. Some days it just seems like everything is hard and I'm clumsy and things just don't turn out the way I wish they would. It seems as if it is very difficult to get anything done. All manner of obstacles to my own inclinations arise. The weather conspires to keep me indoors. Little things set me off. Things that I might not even notice otherwise. Extreme patience with my own self and with others is called for at such a time and is necessary to keep any kind of harmony in my environment even possible. I require some patience with the fact that everything is just a bit out of sync with me.

One day was borderline for being that kind of day but thankfully not full blown irritating. Just mildly so. I am grateful not to be chronically irritated. I don't know how some people can make it through when they feel irritated day after day. I have been around people who are in a continual state of low-grade dissatisfaction. Nothing is ever entirely "right" for them and they are usually quite willing to share with anyone who is willing to listen why they are justified in feeling so irritated. Some people seem to be fluent in irritation.

And for other people, and I put myself in this category, being irritated is more like a temporary illness or inconvenience. Thankfully, I know that this feeling won't last. Things will smooth out and be happier again and that shift in how things feel will probably happen quite soon in the passage of time. I know that in my heart I would rather not be irritated. I really don't see that feeling as serving very much of usefulness though I can see that it creates within me a desire for a change in how I am feeling about Life as it is unfolding. Being irritated doesn't generally change whatever the source of my irritation is. Although I experience irritation sometimes, it seems pointless to remain in that state of being for very long.

There come unbidden days when life just seems physically difficult and making the effort to find within my self a place of calm acceptance in the face of it all does seem like a better choice than continuing to feel irritated. Not that it is always simple to move my feeling into that calm side of things. When it seems totally difficult to shift how I am feeling about things, I try to see if I can embrace both feelings at the same time – the irritation and some acceptance that everything just is as it is and there really isn't anything I can do about that. I feel the difficulty and the yearning for greater ease within my self simultaneously. I attempt to feel a true calm acceptance of the vexing circumstances.

Once I took our inherited Suburban in for service. It has a button simple 4-wheel assist for the usual all wheel drive and that is important in this rugged terrain sometimes. The transmission seems to slip at times when pulling away from a full stop. The dealer claims not to be able to find a cause and therefore any possibility of actually fixing this. They offer to change out the differential (even though they rarely find a need to do that) and transfer case fluids. It will cost us a few hundred dollars to try that and it very well may leave me with the same problem I came in with. The only result may be cleaner internals and some reassurance that I'm not in denial about a problem that has been developing and which may still get worse. Then there was the day that our occasional IT expert managed to leave us in worse shape after 4 hours here and a payment of several hundred dollars. We did learn some important aspects about our computer systems. These were aspects of the technology that we were previously ignorant about (built in hidden business security factors that appear to be clogging our systems and that we probably don't need). To fix it is going to require effort and more money we didn't intend to spend going in. Such minor issues can feel VERY irritating when these all happen in a single day.

I try to remind myself that is only money. I try and realize that life simply is complicated. The only choice it seems is for me to adapt and cope and try my best to keep up with technology that changes rapidly. It does seem to take having some expert advice in order for us to keep up with it. I try to face whatever comes with a calm acceptance. Somewhere deep inside I know that everything really is just fine and well as it is. It is okay to understand that Life feels overly complicated and difficult sometimes. When the demands of life and other people seem to continuously keep me from accomplishing what I would like to be doing, I will admit that I do get a bit crabby. It doesn't help when difficult weather conditions keep us cooped up inside for prolonged periods by repeated snowstorms and extremely low temperatures when we are living in a small, rather crowded space. Long ago I learned to lean heavily on this mantra – "This too will pass" – and it always proves itself to be true, at least eventually.

~ perspective

When I need to understand patience
and how to go slow I can look at the pace
of Nature and immediately understand.
I'm learning to try to see the other person's
perspective as well as my own so that
I feel less irritation by seeing a
greater wholeness.
Irritation is a kind of pessimistic perspective
on things.
The truth is that Life does not express
human notions of fairness.
The greater my awareness, the better I
understand a kind of order in the appearance
of disorder and chaos as a part of
the nature of existence.

#acceptance #change #harmony #irritations #patience #problems #shift #technology  #vehicles #weather