Being Bothered
It is strange but I often notice that we have a hardship economy. I mean that we like to accumulate hardships like they are valuable.Unfortunately this practice comes at the high cost of being bothered on a regular basis.For example airline travel is a classic example. I am told so often about the hardships of airline travel… my flight was delayed, had to sit on the tarmac, bag was lost… I have of course experienced all of these but to me these “hardships” are experienced in luxury and comfort, plenty of food, warmth, safety, often with friends with lots of time to read. The real hardship is only in our minds. In fact I observe how we even record the hardships in our minds, rehearsing and cataloguing them so we can bank them and tell others like they were a valuable commodity.(Here is some perspective from Louis C.K. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E)The funny thing is that when we change our perspective much of the hardship and being bothered goes away (not all of it of course), but we also start to experience the fun, adventure and opportunity of it.What other hardships do we bank in our minds and amplify the hardship and bother? At restaurants? With Traffic? With weather? With employees? With friends or lovers? With children, school, technology…?Think of the hardships experienced by other people in the world; walking 6 miles for water or firewood, crippling injuries or handicaps, bad neighborhoods, poor housing, little money… Think of times in your life when you had less or experienced more difficulties than now. Did you ever go camping and create hardships for fun?View hardship as a perspective; see if you can find your internal motivation to interpret experiences you have as hardships. What value do you get from this perspective? What percentage of your hardships are created by your mind?Lets work to change our internal culture of hardship and see how little we can be bothered by the exigencies of life. Wouldn’t it be more fun?