Why Are You so Frustrated All the Time? Just Let Go…

Why do so many people in our society become so frustrated and upset over every little thing? I don’t quite get it. What’s the big deal?

Okay, your day starts typically with watching the weather report on the TV news channel as you gobble down your low fat low carb low cholesterol high fiber low taste milk shake for breakfast and the very properly dressed weather lady says “bring your umbrella today for it’s certain to rain”.

You look outside, sure it looks cloudy and you decide to lug your huge oversized pinstriped self opening many colored umbrella with you to work. How were you to know that the weather lady had absolutely no idea what she was talking about on TV that morning and you were never to see a single rain drop that day. Why do you find it frustrating carrying around that oversized heavy umbrella all day?

Do you feel that the weather lady was picking on you personally, that she has a single minded vendetta to make sure to ruin your busy day by making you carry that ridiculous thing around all day? Of course not my friend, she did not mean it in any harmful way at all. Just let it go.

All right, so you rushed into the local coffee shop before you burst into your office building this morning and ordered a double mocha diet late with lowfat cream, no sugar, and a plain bagel very lightly buttered to go because you only had about eight minutes to get to your office on time and not have your boss glowering at you for being late. How could you have possibly known that the clerk behind the counter at the coffee shop had just recently arrived from some far away foreign land and could barely say hello, never mind trying to understand the food order you blurted out at him in your rush to get to work?

So he gave you a double espresso with lots of sugar and an everything bagel so loaded with butter that you thought the damn thing could start mooing out loud right there on your desk. Do you really believe that the owner of the coffee shop deliberately hired this non-English speaking person to persecute you specifically and ruin your entire morning at work? Come on man, no way. He was just trying to do his best to take as much advantage of a foreign person as he could by paying him the lowest possible wage conceivable and therefore hoarding more money for himself. That’s all. Take my advice, just let it go.

So then you powered up your computer at work only to see the most hated of messages on the screen “Network Down, Please Try Again Later”. Of all the mornings for this to happen. Last night before you left work you thought about printing out that big quarterly report the boss wanted on his desk later this morning. But it was already past 6PM and your buddies were waiting at the bar and you knew that you had enough time to print it out this morning and deliver it to your boss on time.

Oh the plans we make and look what happens to them. It is not your fault that the computer technicians will not return any of your telephone calls. You have called them fourteen times this morning and left increasingly urgent messages on their voice mail seeking help. By the way leaving them a message saying that you had incurable cancer and only four hours to live was probably not such a great idea.

After all how could you have known that the stupid computer game you downloaded yesterday at work while you were bored out of your mind carried with it a fatal virus that crashed the entire system this morning? I guess the big problem now is not the report that is going to be obviously late, but God help you if the techies trace the download back to your computer and discover how the system went down, now that could be a bit of a pickle.

But look my friend. There’s no need to get frustrated over this. Clearly the designers of the game virus did not have you personally in mind when they wrote that nasty computer code. You could not have known that the game had a virus and you certainly could not anticipate the crashing of the entire system thereby preventing you from printing out your report. My advice is to just let it go.

Okay, on your way home, ragged and beaten down by the events of this unlikely day you happen to stop in at your favorite laundry service to pick up your clean clothes. You hand the clerk your ticket and cash, she hands you a nice looking bag that smells all clean and pretty. When you get home and prepare to put your clothes away you discover that she gave you the laundry of some sort of pervert. This bag that you brought home did not contain your laundry but instead a bagful of unspeakable disgusting perverted sex clothing that you would never wear in a million years.

Now come on, don’t tell me that you actually believe that the laundry clerk was attempting to tell you something about your own sex life and perhaps trying to spice it up a little for you? You and I both know that this was just a simple honest mistake and you were just handed the wrong bag. Now, don’t get all frustrated I tell you, just let it go.

And then of course later that evening when you got on the telephone to check your bank accounts in order to make certain that everything was working the way it was supposed to and you dialed the 800 number, why did you get so upset when the computer instructed you “For English Press 1”? Okay, there was something wrong with the computer that night and even though you are pretty sure you pressed 1 the damn thing started speaking to you in Portuguese. No matter how many times you dialed the 800 number and pressed 1 you seemed to get any language but English.

Okay so when you called the bank’s help line and tried to explain to the person what was happening, she in her oh so relaxed and professional tone kept telling you “But sir, all indications are that our system is working just fine, we have no reports of any problems at this time”. Now I know you wanted to just climb right into that phone and strangle her with your bare hands, but come on now. Was that thought really necessary?

She was just robotically repeating the idiotic script she is paid to spout when frustrated people like you call to complain about a problem. You know perfectly well that she could care less about your problem and was not doing anything just to frustrate you personally. She was just doing what she was paid to do. Lie to your face.
My advice, buddy, is just let it go.

I just don’t understand why so many people in our society are so frustrated all the time.