To Be or Not to Be – Irritated

What do you do when you are irritated by something little, but constant?

Our Experience

Now I think she is doing it just to irritate me.

Probably not, but she seems to be enjoying it.

Libby has become addicted to the Find My Phone function on her watch. No longer will she look for her phone. If she took a nanosecond to look up and quickly survey the flat surfaces within reach, she would see it. No, her new reflex is to trigger her watch. Throughout the day her phone will chirp. It’s sudden and unpredictable. This feature should be renamed Make Mark Jump.

I realize that Libby and I have different concepts of a lost phone. To me a lost phone is one you have looked for and cannot find and cannot remember where you last used it. To Libby a lost phone is one that is not in her hand. It may be only three minutes since she used it and perhaps she has not even left the room.

Chirp, Ta Ta Chirp, Ta Ta Chirp.

Most of the time I try to ignore the noise, and I certainly do not say anything. But the other day I could not resist an eye roll when she came in and retrieved her phone from the kitchen island. (Amazingly, it was right where she normally puts it.)

Of course, Libby did not appreciate my eye roll and called me on it.

“Don’t give me that,” she said. “You’ve been a little irritable all day.”

Should this be the moment I teach her some phone etiquette?

The problem was that she was right. Why was the chirping irritating me?

Hmmmm . . .

It only took sixty seconds worth of reflection and resisting getting defensive for me to trace my irritation.

Irritation is like a leaky roof. It’s hard to find where it is coming from. But as I thought through the events and interactions of the day, I realized that I had skimmed over or ignored several things that had bothered me. One was a conversation with someone that I totally ignored because of my affection for

the person. I realized that I was frustrated by something they had said and needed to figure out a way to address it with them. I also realized that I was disappointed over some unmet expectations. It was the second day of Papa Camp for our grandson, and I had planned a great day, but by 11:00am we were both tired of camp. He didn’t bite on the piano lessons like I had hoped.

Was I overthinking the chirping phone irritation?

Absolutely not!

I was choosing to be more than a reaction. I was choosing to know myself.

Patience and kindness had been leaking out of me all day.

Admitting that stopped the leak and the tank began to fill.

Irritation is a great teacher if we stop long enough to listen.

What is irritation teaching you?