As human beings, we have a tendency (some of us, anyway) to take disasters and inconveniences personally. We see them as evidence that the world is out to get us. We see X as some sort of punishment for doing Y or not doing Z.
Part of that mentality is our inability to step outside of ourselves…to realize that the traffic jam we’re stuck in isn’t some cosmic plot meant to prevent us, and us alone, from reaching our destination. There are hundreds of others in the exact same situation, inconvenienced not by some higher power but, instead by the simpler explanation that the four-lane highway you’re stuck on has one lane closed because of an accident (people who possibly are having a worse day) and empties onto a two-lane street.
I’m going to mention a line from The Godfather.
“It’s not personal. It’s just business”
-Al Pacino as Michael Corleone
Sure…getting cut off in traffic is infuriating. So is waiting in an interminable line at the grocery or DMV. Not being upset about those things, or worse incidents, wouldn’t be human. But hanging on to that anger…letting it grow into something that leads you to the idea that the whole world is against you…that is something you can control.
This is true, even in the most disastrous of events. There are things you have control over and things you don’t. Try to spend your time and energy on the former. Try not to linger on the latter.
Matt Hardman 