Life’s little frustrations

As I wrote recently, I was taking the trash to the curb a few weeks ago and noticed a dark spot on the car. I went to take a closer look and saw a long horizontal streak. I grabbed a rag and tried to wipe away the black mark, but it wouldn’t wipe off. 

Someone had sideswiped our car, ripping away the car’s paint and leaving a long, thin black line. My wife and I retraced our steps and tried to remember when it might have happened, but neither of us had a clue. (You can read the letter I wrote to the driver.)

When I saw the mark again this week, I was still annoyed, but I reminded myself that we actually lucked out, it could have been much worse. I thought about the family members who lost loved ones in a major car accident near us this week. They would love to have their loved ones with us today, with minor paint damage to clean up, instead of having to make funeral plans.

But still, we all face our fair share of Life Annoyances. I’m not talking about life or death issues. I’m talking about the little inconveniences that turn a good day into a bad one, a positive mood into a negative one.

Here’s a few:

• Your phone stops working. In today’s world, life without a phone can be a huge hurdle. My son found this out recently the hard way. A phone not working right is one thing, but getting locked out in the age of multi-factor authentication is another thing altogether. It makes accessing your laptop and key websites a major challenge.
• You miss your bus or train or your car stops working. We’re able to work remotely more than any other time in history, but being late or not having necessary transportation is still a problem.

• Technology — both hardware and software — poses all kind of frustrating problems. For example, one of the letters on my laptop is sticking. When you press on the letter, the tab actually comes off the keyboard. I know that I need to get it worked on, I’m pretty sure it’s an easy fix, but figuring out the right answer can be a problem sometimes unto itself. 
• Finally, one of the biggest frustrations I run into is when people fail to do what they said they were going to do, whether it’s the local garage that fails to inspect my car on time or a repairman failing to come between the hours 8 and noon. Life is hard enough, can we all agree to not make it harder on each other? 

Life is full of frustrating inconveniences, but I find that what matters most is how we respond to them. I’m trying to have a positive attitude about most things. I’m successful some days, others not so much.

It’s a learning process.