RI Week #2: Life Consists of Trivialities

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“Life consists of trivialities and very little else. If you think of what you worry about, it’s trivialities. Whether you should buy a certain item or not. Whether you should buy it now or wait until the price goes down.  Should you spend money on unnecessary things  or should you save the money? These are trivialities, average happenings.

The average person deals constantly with average happenings, with trivialities. You eat, you sleep, you walk, you go to school, you see friends, you talk on the phone.  That takes up 90 percent of your day, if not 98 percent. Life consists of trivialities mainly. How often does a father die? Once in a lifetime. That’s not a common, average, trivial event. How often does somebody in the family get married, or somebody get born? How often does your house burn down? Whatever you call a big item happens rarely.

These trivialities of everyday life create responses in you. You either don’t notice them because they don’t interest you, or they cheer you because they please you, or they anger you, or scare you. Even the simplest triviality can scare or anger you. In the life of a parent, the fact that a baby cries is a triviality. A thousand things that the baby does are trivialities, but a mother may work herself up over each of these trivialities. The closer a relation is, the more trivialities can irritate, frustrate, anger and scare you.

Trivialities crowd your life, but any one of them may arouse your anger, your fear, your disgust, or your terror. I want you to learn how to deal with trivialities, not to get upset by trivialities. You must learn to handle the trivialities of daily life without temper. If you wish to be trained in this system, be prepared to listen to nothing but trivialities. That’s life.

Life is to get angry at a person who doesn’t look at you, or a person who stares at you, a person who talks too much, or a person who doesn’t talk at all. That’s life. It is also to eat a bad meal or a good meal. If you eat a bad meal, you feel anger. If you eat a good meal, they you feel enjoyment. That’s life. Utterly trivial. ”

 

Wow- If I hear the word trivialities one more time…. haha. To be honest, I get so worked up over the simplest things in everyday life. Being late for work, rushing home to pick up the kids, get upset at the kids for thrashing the house, getting upset with myself if I don’t get the dishes done after dinner. All of these things, ten years from now, I probably wont even remember. So why get worked up over it? Think about it. Lets gain some grateful perspective and enjoy everyday life. 🙂

 

Good group today, it was nice to hear and share stories. Until next week…