Singer/songwriter Jason Mraz has written that in his experience, “anger and frustration are the result of not being authentic in your life, or with someone in your life,” contending further that life will not work the way you want it to if you are not true to yourself in all things.
Those who get frustrated with themselves in sport, for example in football, if you are not quite making tackles, not quite getting on the end of long balls, hitting the post, or seeing every shot saved, it is probably not ‘bad luck’ that is getting you frustrated, but if you are honest, you are probably not working as hard on your fitness as you should, and ‘cheating’ yourself by taking shortcuts in the gym. As Thomas Jefferson, since paraphrased by Sam Goldwyn and Gary Player, once wrote: “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."
Life has that effect of ‘biting you on the backside’ if you do not give of yourself completely to anything, whether it is relationships, friendships, jobs, or what. When you get frustrated, and it is almost always with yourself not being able to do something properly, perhaps you should ask a different question? Rather than, “What is going on?” Perhaps you should ask, “What am I not doing?” Or... do something different, and accept Rick Warren’s advice that, “A sense of humor is God’s antidote for anger and frustration.”
I do like that option... it is more relaxing, and I don’t really want to analyse my faults, because that list may just be too long! “Expectation,” said Latino actor Antonio Banderas, “is the mother of all frustration.”
And it is not difficult to see where this thought comes from. If we expect life to be simple, and easy, and it is not... we will be frustrated to some extent. We will have to do more, maybe to work harder, for longer than we thought, to achieve that which we thought was, to some extent, a fair expectation. The sorry truth is that life is rarely easier than you thought, and it will constantly challenge you, because your expectations get confused with your dreams.
The dreams we have become hopes, and hopes become expectations, if those expectations are not realised, they become disappointments. A contemporary issue is that our generation has gone so far past the need for survival, beyond need, beyond even comfort, so much so that want has become today’s doctrine, and expectation our material, consumerist theology. We have become slaves to want and even worse... the expectation of that want being satisfied, and usually by the government. Yet those days are clearly gone, consigned to the past, and nothing but fancy in the future.
If you have read this far, you are probably upset with me, but we are all different, and we all see things differently. Certainly, I don’t see myself as exempt from what I have written, except in my maturity. I have lived, loved, lost, found, made, broken, come, gone, taught, and learned... yet I still cannot see myself as anything other than vulnerable to my own failings. I should have all my ‘ducks in a row,’ have a solution for every problem, but I don’t, and that’s what makes us human. What I have learned is that life is merciless, and there is no substitute for work. Hard work, or smart work, but your intensity of work, your achievements, successes, and opportunities arise out of working... not wishing or wanting.
There are those... who would prefer your bad days, your frustrations, to theirs. Don’t sulk in that pit of despondency, that well of despair, that swamp of chagrin, or that morass of regret... get living! Get better at being better... and stop wishing and hoping... grow up!
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