Now and Zen - The Broken Glass

How many times have you gotten upset because someone wasn’t doing their job, because your child isn’t behaving, because your partner or friend isn’t living up to his or her end of the bargain?

How many times have you been irritated when someone doesn’t do things the way you’re used to? Or when you’ve planned something carefully and things didn’t go as you’d hoped?

This kind of anger and irritation happens to all of us — it’s part of the human experience.

Several things that irritate me are when people talk during a movie, cut me off in traffic, chew with their mouth open, and mangling the pronunciation of words like "nuclear" and "jewelry". Actually, I have a lot of these little annoyances — don’t we all?

It isn’t always easy to find peace when you’ve become upset or irritated.

Let me let you in on a little secret to finding peace of mind: see the glass as already broken.

The cause of our stress, anger and irritation is that things don’t go the way we like, the way we expect them to. This is all part of our need to control or micro-manage every facet of our lives and environment. How many times this has been true for you?

And so the solution is simple: expect things to go wrong, expect things to be different than we hoped or planned, expect the unexpected to happen and accept it.

Here's a suggestion for complete reboot of your mindeset with respect to disappointment. Expect things to go wrong — they always do. Remind yourself and those around you to see it as part of the adventure.

This works like a charm. When you inevitably take the wrong exit on the interstate, or when it rains on the day you go camping, or you forget your cellphone and realize it halfway to work; just remind yourself that it’s part of the adventure! You'll find yourself increasingly less bothered by life's hurdles.

So, when the nice glass you bought inevitably falls and breaks, someday, you might get upset. But not if you see the glass as already broken, from the day you get it. You know it’ll break someday, so from the beginning, see it as already broken. Be a time-traveler, or someone with time-traveling vision, and see the future of this glass, from this moment until it inevitably breaks.

When it breaks, you won’t be upset or sad — because it was already broken, from the day you got it. And you’ll realize that every moment you have with it is precious.

Expect your child to mess up — all children do. And don’t get so upset when they mess up, when they don’t do what they’re “supposed” to do … because they’re supposed to make mistakes.

Expect your partner to be less than perfect. Expect your friend to not show up sometimes.

Expect things to go not according to plan.

Expect people to be rude sometimes.

Expect coworkers not to come through sometimes.

Expect roommates not to wash their dishes or pick up their clothes, sometimes.

Expect the glass to break.

And accept it.

You won’t change these inevitable facts — they will happen, eventually. And if you expect it to happen — even see it as already happening, before it happens — you won’t get so upset.

You won’t overreact. You’ll respond appropriately, but not overreact. You can talk to the person about their behavior, and ask them kindly to consider your feelings when they do this … but you won’t get overly emotional and blow things out of proportion.

You’ll smile, and think, “I expected that to happen. The glass was already broken. And I accept that.”

You’ll have peace of mind. And that, my friends, is a welcome surprise.