I knew a 3-year-old who was desperately trying to buckle her car seat. She howled from the back of the min-van, “WHY DID GOD MAKE MY BUCKLE SO HARD TO BUCKLE???” I love that her car seat was somehow God’s manufacturing design.
But I’m totally like that when it comes to minor inconveniences. I get frustrated and, yes, sometimes cry, and complain to God for not making everything in my life perfect. Yeah, because he doesn’t have anything else to do.
Here are some things that have ticked me off in the past 3 days:
-
MY LIFE IS SO HARD!!!! - People driving too slowly.
- People driving too fast.
- Red lights.
- Green lights.
- Heat.
- Rain.
- Bugs.
- Being late someplace.
- Being early someplace.
- Traffic.
- People who cheat in traffic.1
- Not having time to finish a book.
- Finishing a book that I didn’t want to end.
- People yelling at their kids.
- People not disciplining their kids.
- Computer programs that think they’re smarter than me and format my stuff the wrong way and won’t let me fix it.
- “Spit” as the past tense even in published books!!
- Grammatical errors in general.
- Hitting backspace on this post, having it go back a page, and having to rewrite this whole angry list.
- Prime numbers.2
Tip of the iceberg, folks.
Um, so, chill pill much? I’m not exaggerating when I say I could easily grumble or shout about something 50 times a day. I’m that irritable.
I’d guess that most of you are, too, especially in this world of instant gratification and expected perfection. I feel so sorry for myself when I don’t have air conditioning for two weeks. Forget the fact that I have running water and a fan and a car with air conditioning and access to air conditioned churches and libraries and homes–I’m hot and you should feel bad for me!
But the other day I read a short essay by Chesterton in which he suggests that irritation is all a matter of attitude and I began to wonder.
Why on earth am I annoyed at a red light when I was running early anyway? Doesn’t #4 cancel out #10? Shouldn’t I be pleased that I can avoid the awkwardness of being early?
But I’ve conditioned myself to be annoyed at everything that inconveniences me. I’ve decided how life ought to treat me and I think it’s unfair if anything doesn’t go according to plan. How arrogant! How completely unchristian!
What a waste of time.
Forget virtue for a minute (I know I usually do). If I want to be happy, this is just dumb. Why don’t I choose joy? In minor issues that don’t make any real difference to my life, why don’t I let myself be happy?
I’m sure it all comes back to pride–it always seems to. But Chesterton’s right (as usual): it’s an attitude issue. I can’t change the minor inconveniences that plague me, but I can choose to rejoice anyway.
St. James gives us a little attitude check at the beginning of his letter:3
Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (Jas 1:2-3)
Now James is probably talking about actual suffering, which is a matter for another post, but I don’t see why we can’t take his (and Chesterton’s) advice and be a little bit Pollyanna when it comes to the minor inconveniences that give us “terrible days.” You’ll remember that Pollyanna always played “The Glad Game,” finding something happy in the most miserable circumstances. She didn’t let her situation dictate her mood but chose to find what was beautiful in a given situation. She’s code for trite optimism, but I think we could all learn a little from the way her choices govern her character.
Why do I choose irritation? Why do I choose stress? And it really is a choice; most of the things that “ruin my day” are so minor that I might not even notice them if I’m distracted. But it feels better to be angry about traffic than it does to recognize that I wasn’t going anywhere important anyway. Or even if I was, how important could it really be, in the grand scheme of salvation? How many of the things that drive me to sin are really that serious?
I’m not saying that real suffering shouldn’t be honored. I’m saying that most of us probably aren’t dealing with real suffering when we’re upset. We’re probably indulging in some worthless (and possibly sinful) self-pity, which only serves to make us more obsessed with ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the help. I’m plenty self-absorbed as it is. Sirach’s good and blunt about this:
Do not give in to sadness; torment not yourself with brooding…. Distract yourself…. Envy and anger shorten one’s life…. (Sir 30:21, 23a, 24a)
That’s all there is to it. Quit whining about your buckle, change the shirt you spilled chocolate sauce on (or rewrite the email you lost or settle in for some smooth jazz while you wait in traffic or whatever) and be a grown-up. I’ve been babysitting all week. God knows the world doesn’t need more temper tantrums.
Mother Teresa once admonished: Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen. So maybe that’s our litmus test: is this worse than Calvary? Is this so bad that even the pierced hands of Christ on Easter morning couldn’t drive the sorrow from my heart? Would I be embarrassed to mention to the risen Christ that this was the reason I lost my cool?
And then maybe look for the good. Or just acknowledge the annoying element and compare it to the other good in your life. Or get over yourself and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around you.
Consider it joy. The little stuff, anyway. That’s my challenge to myself this week: to choose joy even in frustration. I’ll let you know how it goes.
- You can tell I’m back in Northern Virginia when half my post is about traffic. [↩]
- Which is why this list now has 20 items–or did until WordPress decided that I meant to have 1 and 2 on top of each other which shows up as one before two with a blank spot that I can’t erase. See number 17, which was actually on here even before that happened. [↩]
- Probably not the St. James of today’s feast day which will most likely be yesterday by the time I get this thing published. [↩]