Why are we constantly irritated in life?

From my friend Dr PV Vaidyanathan's note in Facebook:

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One thing I have noticed about most people is that we spend a lot of time being extremely irritated. On deeper examination and analysis, I realized that most often, our irritations stem from the fact that life is not behaving as we want it to, at this moment of time. Most of us want the weather to be a little more cold or hot, a little more dry or humid, we want our workload to be lesser than what it is, we want our incomes to be more than what it currently is, we want people around us to understand us more that what they are currently doing, we want to be a few kilos more or less than what we are, we want the prices of commodities to be less than what they actually are------basically, our minute to minute irritations in life stem from the fact that all of us have fixed an ideal, some sort of gold standard about most aspects of life, and are peaceful only when life matches this gold standard.

While this does happen once in a while, more often than not, our expectations are not fully met, leaving us irritated. It is my estimate that most of us spend more than half our lives, in an irritable mood, wishing and wanting things to change, to suit our convenience. This behavior on our part is quite understandable, and one can empathize and sympathize with the fact that every human being wants life to proceed according to his own whims and fancies. However, life obviously seems to have its own set of plans, its own blueprint which are not shown to us. The day we really understand this, at the innermost level and not just at an intellectual level, we are ready to let go, and to float and get carried by the river of life, wherever it takes us, without straining and pushing to change the flow of events. Once we give up the need to control---anything and everything-----our irritations disappear and life becomes more tolerable, more live-able, and all the energy that we have been busy employing trying to change or alter the course of life is now free and available to us, to engage is some form of creative pursuit or hobby. Of course, you must be very careful and aware to see that you don't start trying to control the outcomes of your creativity also, or you will be back to square one----that of feeling irritable.

Facebook | Pudugram Vaidyanathan: Why Are We Constantly Irritated In Llife? (19 February 2010)
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