LIFE-LINT, OR SOMETHING IMPORTANT
Wednesday Feb. 6, 2019
Some days when I encounter someone who is being cranky I’ve often asked, and not so timidly, “So, who are you really mad at?”
It would only be fair and just that when tables are turned – when I’m being the cranky one, that I ask myself that same question. Asking who – or what, has me bummed?
Sometimes that issue, that person, that ‘annoyance du jour’ is really a hill worth dying on. Most often it won’t be important a year from now, or next month or next week – so why get fussed? Still, we do. The answer isn’t blowing in the wind and isn’t found on a shrink’s couch either.
Confrontation and conflict are hard things to come to grips with; whether strangers, new-ish acquaintances, old friends or family. Gritty little things that irritate and linger over time are not like the grain of sand an oyster fashions into a pearl but more like sandpaper that rubs raw.
My point is that we should pause a bit more, a bit more often and a bit more purposefully – to ask ourselves if that thing which annoys us is just life-lint in our belly button or real angst in our belly that really matters. If it matters, then our challenge is: ‘do something about it’ …
