Why bother?
This year my commute to work has gotten longer than in the past. Also, I now get to experience driving through London traffic most days, which among other things at least gives me some time to think. The instances that I come across someone doing something that causes me frustration probably averages one a day. This morning driving in, while thinking about what I am going to write for the 500 words, I had one gentleman just walk out in the middle of the road, headphones on, cigarette in hand, all the while looking at me with a “what you going to do” look. I beeped the horn, threw the hands up in frustration and was annoyed for a few minutes.
In situations like this, it’s easy for us to become annoyed at someone. However, what does that annoyance do for us? We can’t communicate it in a rationale manner to the person and so we just end up being annoyed by ourselves in the car. Those proceeding minutes after the incident, when it’s just me annoyed in the car, how is that helping me? Allowing ourselves to get annoyed and wound up has only affected us and made it worse for ourselves.
What we feel or think, projects how we see everything around us. If we are full of judgement and easily annoyed, we are just projecting negative thoughts and wrapping ourselves up in an endless negative cycle. This judgement on others actions or thoughts, can briefly provide us with some form of superior feeling but is ultimately isolating.
This expands to complaining, the act of it provides us with some short form of relief. Especially if we have others who complain about the same issue. I remember hearing in the past of a challenge were you are supposed to go for several days (unsure on exact amount) without complaining. I lasted less than one day, but what it did highlight to me was how often I was complaining. These complaints were rarely ever followed by any productive thoughts about how to go about fixing what it was I was complaining about. Currently I’m trying to find a balance. I do think there is something rewarding in sharing the problems you are facing with those close to you, regardless of whether a solution or advice is given or not. However, we must not allow ourselves to be constantly complaining all the time about every little detail. We know people like this and we often don’t enjoy conversations with these people as due to their constant complaining, their ability to see any good around them has dwindled. Like mentioned above, how we feel and think influences how we interpret that which happens around us. The guy walking out in the middle of the road in front of me, annoyed me for a few minutes. However, it also helped me clarify what I wanted to write about this week and solidify the “why bother getting annoyed” mentality as I am only furthering my own suffering by allowing annoyance to consume me.
