Wednesday, February 6, 2019

A good day yesterday!  A very good day!

What was so good about it?  Everything in particular!

Isn’t it strange how we have the expressions “nothing in particular” and “everything in general,” but we do not generally switch it around, except in very particular cases.

But why shouldn’t we speak of “everything in particular”?

Some folks say that we are troubled by little things (the particulars), because we are pleased by little things.

There may be some truth to that, but I suspect that there is another way to look at it.  Could we not be pleased with little things, while at the same time turning a blind eye to little things that displease us?  I have been practicing this art of late, and have found that even when I don’t get it perfect, the practice makes me happy  I don’t have to wait for joy until I entirely succeed.

It used to be very different with me.  I used to be irritated by everything and everyone in particular and in general.  The list of irritations went on and on.  I updated and added to it daily.  I was irritated by such things as

• people who tailgated me on the highway,
• people who drove too slowly on the highway, and were in front of me,
• food that wasn’t exactly what I wanted,
• gaining weight,
• eating good, healthy food,
• Democrats,
• Republicans,
• independents,
• religious people,
• atheists,
• Caucasians,
• races other than Caucasians,
• having my sleep interrupted, and
• my own tendency to be so easily irritated.

Nowadays, however, there isn’t much that irritates me.  Why?  Because I practice a simple discipline: I stop, take off my shoe, and empty the sand out.

What do I mean by this, you ask?  Simple!  Have you ever had a grain of sand or a small piece of gravel in your shoe?  Of course, you have.  What do you do?  Do you keep walking, and curse the sand or gravel?

Well, maybe you do keep walking and curse.  But if so, you are not walking in wisdom.  If you are wise, you sit down or stand, empty your shoe, put your shoe back on, and go on walking.

The same thing works for irritations.  The only difference is that it is your mind that you need to empty.

“But I’m not the problem!” I hear someone scream.  Yeah, I used to believe that, too.  It was those people who were the problem, it was these circumstances.  The whole world was out to get me.  If I wasn’t paranoid, that was only because I didn’t go to a psychiatrist for a diagnosis.

But these days, I am coming to an increasingly clear realization: My irritations belong to me.  My irritations are not caused by any external grain of sand.  I need to take a grain of sand with a grain of salt.  I need to examine my thoughts and expectations.  Those are what are killing me, not the grain of sand or the tiny piece of gravel in my shoe.

Let me illustrate.  I like watching reruns of the T.V. show, “The Big Bang Theory.”  I’ve watched almost all of them, probably several times.  Last night, at the time when the show was about to come on, my wife (who almost never protests about what I like to watch on T.V.) said, “I’m going to watch ‘Jeopardy’ or something.  You’ve seen all the ‘Big Bang’ shows several times.”

I was surprised, but not terribly upset.  “Oh, okay,” I said, and went over to my computer to listen to AccuRadio and grade papers.  “Just keep it turned down,” I requested.

Now, years ago, I would have turned my wife’s reasonable insistence on watching something else into a very big hick-hack.  I would have apologized later, but the damage would have been considerable.

Instead, she apologized—quite unnecessarily—and we watched “The Big Bang Theory” together, despite the fact that I said I did not have to watch it.  Not expecting to get your way all the time is a wonderfully freeing mental discipline.

Is there external injustice and wrong-doing in the world?  Yes!  And I need to be aware of that, and striving and praying to change things for other people for the better.

But there are thousands of irritating grains of sand that get into my mind on a daily basis.  And I am responsible for emptying my mind of those grains of sand, so that I can keep walking as I should. Maybe then, I would have more energy and focus so that I could make more progress in helping with external injustice and wrong-doing.