âThey would’ve learned to wear skins, adopted stoic mannerisms, learned the bow and the lance.â â Star Trek
Okay, it was really only one color. But it was a LOT of ink. Staining and painting. Stainting?
I rarely saw Pop Wilder mad at any living human being, at least I rarely saw him mad after I reached the age of ten. And I assure you that I deserved it every single time he was mad at me â drawing on the hardwood floor in ink under my bed wasnât a particularly popular move â especially since Ma and Pop only discovered it the night before we were supposed to be out of the house so that the new owners could move in.
Oops.
Perhaps his even temper with people was learned. After being in banking for decades (and having me around for years), I imagine heâd seen everything, including frogs swimming in the World War I helmet his father wore. It might be that he believed the worst of people, and that way when they werenât horrible, they pleasantly surprised him, and when he found ink on his hardwood floor and the family photo album soaking in the bathroom sink (I promise I had a good reason)? Or spray painted the fender of his brand-new car? Well, that was to be expected.
So, Pop Wilder was a mild and even tempered man and perhaps even a saint for not killing me. The one exception to him getting angry was that he would get mad at . . . things. Chainsaws. Cars. Snow machines. The blinking light on his VCR. In fact, the only time I ever heard him drop the f-bomb was when he was referring to his computer. He said it not long after Iâd introduced him to the future The Mrs., and in her presence. âItâs . . . itâs all f****d up.â Honoring Pop Wilderâs tone and frustration make it a form of punctuation in our house when things have just gone completely wrong but in a comical and hopeless manner.
But what I do know is this: Â the computer didnât care.
Ahh, the United States Swear Force in action.
Dead Roman Marcus Aurelius nailed it when he wrote, âPray to change yourself, not your circumstances.â Marcus wasnât referring to what was in his control. Being an Emperor of Rome, Marcus could control a lot of things, but thatâs not what frustrated him. No, Marcus was referring to those things he couldnât control. Marcus was going to grow old and die, and he couldnât change that. Marcus would be resurrected as shoe salesman in Savannah, and he couldnât change that, either. Marcus wanted to change himself so he took those things that he couldnât control and not react to them. Why complain about gravity?
Marcus Aurelius, with a hipster beard before it was cool.
The computer doesnât care that youâre mad at it. The computer wonât change if you speak harshly to it, though I hear Bezos is working on a computer that will buy random things from Amazon® that it knows you wonât like, just to spite you if youâre mean to it. Honestly, most people donât care if youâre mad at them, either. The real secret is, however, that most things simply do not matter on any sort of cosmic scale. I even wrote you, dear Internet, a poem about that:
The Unblinking Stars
The stars looked down.
When Julius Caesar was born, they looked down.
When Caesar defeated the Gaul, they looked down.
When Caesar died, they looked down.
For every man, for every empire.
The stars looked down.
Unblinking.
When continents split, and then recombined.
The stars looked down.
Nearly eternal.
At every time, at ever place,
Every ambition, every love.
Every betrayal. Every loyalty.
The stars looked down.
Looking up at them, seeing into eternity.
I gasp. I wonder. I check the router.
Oh, good. The Internetâs back up.
I wonder what just happened on Twitter?
I think that what sets us up to become angry about a situation is contained entirely within ourselves â thereâs a way that we think the world should be, and when the world refuses to be that way, we get angry. And the world doesnât completely conform to anyoneâs hopes and dreams.  From time to time, even I end up comparing my life to someone elseâs life. But I do this particularly awful thing: I compare what theyâre best at, to my accomplishments in the same arena. Letâs take the business guy I knew. He had tens of millions of dollars, a house in the mountains, and even a vintage fighter airplane. I donât have tens of millions of dollars, a house in the mountains, or any airplane thatâs not a model kit that I made when I was a kid.
Thereâs a lot to envy, isnât there? I even think he had a pretty good marriage and smart kids.
Oh, and heâs dead. And he died in a really dramatic fashion that probably left his widow with nearly no money after the lawsuit and attorneyâs fees. So if Iâm going to be envious, I have to be envious of the whole person, not some small aspect of their lives. Itâs a big world and someone, somewhere has it all better than you. Theyâre smarter than you, slimmer than you, with a really close, cool family.
And Iâm okay with that, too.
One thing that helped me through my own personal envy was . . . cars. When I lived in Houston, there were really nice cars everywhere. And by nice, I mean cars that are worth more than my house. I felt envy. Then I thought about the car payment that they had to make (I read somewhere that most Mercedes® on the road are not paid for â theyâre for show). That made my four-year-old dad-four door car that Iâd bought used seem a LOT better than the Mercedes® driven by the 27 year-old at the stop light next to me.
If youâre a billionaire crime-fighting superhero that found an amulet that gives you super powers but also covers your body in reptilian scales while flying screaming skulls follow you around? I suppose itâs okay if you buy yourself something nice every once in a while.
To recap:
- The situation doesnât care. Donât get mad at it, especially if itâs beyond your control.
- Most things really donât matter â donât get hung up on the trivia of now.
- If you wonât remember it next year? Itâs probably meaningless. Donât sweat it.
- Donât compare yourself to others, unless theyâre clearly awful in everything compared to you. Then gloat.
- Expect that your children will destroy thousands and thousands of dollars of your property and at least a dozen priceless, irreplaceable heirlooms. And burn the counter with hot macaroni. And write on the bathroom walls. And . . . oh, wait, those were my kids . . .
Wait, what? Iâm Pop Wilder now. When did that happen?
Wise words, but sometimes the frustration demands some choice words, stomping around the room, and kicking the computer. Of course, the computer won’t magically reboot, work perfectly, allow you to save the world, and the computer tech just shakes their head, while explaining to you how the computer shorted, when you kicked it, and hard drive is fried.
I must say, The Boy has rescued TWO of my hard drives after they stopped working. But I said a LOT of bad words until it all worked again.
You misunderstand. We are NOT cussing at the computer. We really just hate personified evil in the form of Bill Gates and our Sino Overlords who have Death Switch chips installed. We are not allowed to cuss at our glorious leaders, nor wish a long painful death upon William, no matter how justifiable. God might be listening, after all. Or at least the wife. So cussing at the computer is really just code.
I like Big Bill. At least he’s open about wanting our money, rather than selling us like Google. I do think that those switches are installed. Sadly, I think they are installed in our fighters, carriers, etc.
While working a summer job while in college our supervisor had a great outlook on one of our co-workers who was infamous for storming about after some minor, self-inflicted inconvenience….”The world is having a tough time adjusting to the way Dave wants it to run.” It puts things into perspective.
Yeah, it’s a hard thing to fight. Especially with chainsaws.
The whole POINT of getting mad at inanimate objects is that they don’t care.
Yelling and screaming makes you feel better. It lets you decompress a bit. Then you can focus on actually solving the problem, without the extra stress of keeping your emotions rigidly in check.
It also makes it significantly easier to keep emotions rigidly in check and maintain a thoroughly professional demeanor when dealing with people – particularly unreasonable people. Ask me how I know this.
I wrecked my brother’s truck by running into a PARKED truck. I then kicked the tire on my brother’s truck for about three minutes. I’d had my license for, oh, three days.
I will admit I did feel better.