News Flash - Being Annoyed Is Not Fatal

If you are what you eat, then clearly you've had 2 heaping bowls of annoying today.

Here is the news flash as promised. Feeling annoyed? Are you surrounded by others that annoy you? Finding yourself irritated by the noise and chatter and conversation day in and day out until you roll your eyes heavenward as a desperate plea with the powers that be?

BEING ANNOYED IS NOT FATAL.

There I said it. At what point did we decide as a people that we just could not tolerate the person in front of us at the check-out counter who is asking the clerk a question or worse yet inquiring of the clerk how that new grand baby is? How did we come to a place as a society where because we are annoyed by another's driving that our first and best response is to honk, hit the window button and extend our middle finger? Or, why do we think that 2 sentences in to another's conversation with us we have to stop them and exclaim that certainly we do not want to hear THAT! Here is something I hear people of all ages offer frequently of late..."How annoying is THAT?" Clearly a rhetorical question.

You know what is annoying? The lack of patience and grace we are offering one another. Perhaps the young mother undergoing chemo and radiation finds it annoying that while she is hoping to save herself from an early exit from this earthly plane she finds herself stuck in the bathroom vomiting when she would like to be spending quality time with family. It may be that the bereaved individual that has just lost a child to tragic circumstances finds it more than annoying when discussing their loss the alleged listener references losing their goldfish the year prior.

There is little argument that each and every single blessed day there are people and loved ones and circumstances that present themselves full on in our face that make us want to reach for our hair and yank from the roots. Perhaps since we are all experiencing a high level of these moments we can consider shifting the kind of energy that we expend on our daily and multitudinous annoyances.

The next time you are faced with the crazy and inattentive driver and you feel your middle finger begin to twitch. Take a deep breath and silently bless them. Find yourself listening to your cherubic teen waxing philosophical with endless inserts of the word..."like"? Take two deep breaths and listen with your whole person. Hear what he or she is not saying. Look into their eyes and see them reaching out attempting to make a connection with you. Start asking yourself some key questions the next time your family member has left out the milk for the upteenth time despite their promises to put it away. Will this annoyance take more energy away from my joy quotient? This is not to say in any fashion that there are not times when our truth needs to be spoken and even with some frankness in a constructive manner. It may be that we need to spend time thinking on a scale of 1-10 how annoying a person or situation is in the grand scheme of things. The grand scheme from my perspective has become quite grand and filled with critical decision making for all of us.

Be gentle with yourself so that you may be gentle with others. Even or especially the most annoying among us. Those who are perpetually annoying suffer from something that most of us would not wish on our worst enemy. They know that something is amiss but their lack of self-awareness keeps them from knowing just what that something is and how to remedy it. Their sense of isolation and desperation only makes them, yes, more annoying and unable to make connections. It may even behoove us to consider the remote possibility that we are just that annoying to others.

The question becomes...is the energy I will expend to roll my eyes and clinch my teeth and create the knot in my stomach worth it? Will I feel better in mind, body and spirit if I express my annoyance or will I steel myself for bigger and thorny complications if I use these day to day annoyances as a rehearsal for the truly larger and more difficult matters.

Here's the thing. The disappointments and annoyances we experience on a smaller scale truly are frustrating. They provide for us however a tremendous stage with which to get our chops in shape so to speak. In the divine wisdom of this earthly creation we have been given opportunities again and again to assess what works, what does not work and what works better. This aids us in knowing how to react when it truly heads south on the speed track.

May patience descend upon us when we need it most. May those moments of patience feel so much better in our soul that we utilize it again and again.

And as we do? We all benefit.

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