These days I've been wondering about my irritability. It doesn't come as often as it did some months ago, but it still shows its face every now and then. The fact that I don't deal with it as often doesn't mean I no longer need to worry about it, and right now, when I'm not in the midst of an irritation episode, is actually a perfect moment to look into it in more detail.

I've been thinking about this for some days now, and I've tried to keep an eye out for any triggers, specifically in the morning, which is the time of day I find myself most easily unbalanced. I noticed that much (if not all) of what bothers me are things I feel responsible for but can't control. Whether I feel responsible for my oldest kid not waking up my wife and the youngest in the morning, or maybe I feel responsible for my oldest1 behaving correctly, or maybe I need to clean up the kitchen, make coffee, feed the dogs, or be happy... the list goes on and on. Whenever any of these "responsibilities" is endangered or directly challenged, I get upset.

I see this especially with my son. For example, the other day I felt myself getting disgruntled because he was doing something slightly dangerous (jumping from one sofa to the other), and I was about to tell him not to do it when the thought popped into my head, "man, what does it matter if he falls and hurts himself? that's actually how kids learn, it need not be my responsibility to micromanage every single thing he does".

This realisation opened the door to the fact that I was actually micromanaging a lot of stuff. Whenever I feel something is my responsibility, I subconsciously start keeping track of it in meticulous detail. One thing might not be too much but, given my propensity to take on unnecessary responsibilities, it quickly starts building up until it's indeed "too much".

I've realised that the things that most affect me are the examples I mentioned above, about things I really can't control (like my son). I think this is not because they're "external", but because they're "right there in front of me", meaning I feel a higher degree of responsibility towards them. However, there is also a more subtle kind of thing I feel "responsible" for that is more "internal", and usually doesn't affect my day that much, but it definitely IS there.

An example of these happened just tonight. I was uncomfortable in bed2 and kept moving and stretching until the thought came to me that "there really is no reason for me to do this, just accept the minor discomfort", and just like that, I managed to fall asleep.

This last example points to my perfectionism, and how it permeates everything, including the things I'm responsible for (like my comfort in this case). I often feel that if it's not perfectly done then there's more I can do, so my mind keeps [blank] at it. Like in the example above, I was probably trying to find the position that was just right, an act that was itself making me more uncomfortable. Once I accepted that it was alright the way it was, my mind was able to let go and fall asleep.

As I said, this last sort of problem is really subtle, and it goes on all the time throughout our days3. If we're hungry, we might obsess over food and eating. If we're too hot or too cold, then that's all we think about. It's the same for "grosser" sorts of responsibilities like making sure my son doesn't break his neck while doing "normal kid stuff". These things permeate our whole mind space, all the time.

I don't know if it is possible to live without taking on these responsibilities. I have to admit I still haven't reached the conclusion of why our mind tends to do this, or how we can go about NOT doing it. But it has really helped to be conscious of this process, and now I often catch myself in the act of getting bothered by something and realise, "ah, you don't really have to take on responsibility for this, just let it be".

...

Many sages from ancient and modern times constantly say something like "the universe takes care of itself", or (more popular and frankly catchier) "hakuna matata". Other examples abound. There are some traditions like Taoism that can be said to be pretty much entirely concerned4 with having us humans stop thinking we're so great and control everything, and instead accept we're part of "the Tao", which nourishes and maintains everything according to its own nature, and that there isn't really anything for us to do. "Let It Be".

If you think about it, worrying about responsibilities is directly contrary to being here in the present. Either you worry because of something in the past, "damn I have to feed my dogs", responsibility for others, or "that was so stupid, I shouldn't have said that", responsibility for our social self, or you worry about something that might happen, "don't jump so intensely or you're going to break something".

To close, I want to share a quote from the great Epictetus about this same topic. I have no real recollection of how I stumbled upon it yesterday, but it fits really well. (Maybe finding this quote was what prompted me to write about this topic in the first place? Serendipity in action.)

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us and some things are not up to us.

Thoughts:

  • Now that I'm writing daily, I feel a bit unsure about what to do with my Now page. Is it really meaningful considering I'm pretty much sharing what I'm up to Every Single Day?
    • Maybe I can update the Now page with the thoughts and links of all the posts of the week? Like do a weekly recollection of them. Maybe even share links to "vomits" that I think are important? That's a nice idea, and would help build up a sort of "pyramid" structure of these vomits as time goes on (assuming I manage to keep on doing them).

Today's Good Reads:

  • Lies We Tell Kids — the reasons why adults lie to small children are varied, but it is certain that we lie to them (a lot). Some reasons are acceptable, like if we want to protect them or help their growth, but the great majority of the time adults lie to protect themselves from an uncomfortable conversation.

Footnotes

  1. Yeah, my oldest son features heavily in my list of triggers. ↩

  2. Possibly because of all the pizza I ate at dinner yesterday. ↩

  3. I'm generalising here, assuming your mind works like mine. ↩

  4. Of course, if you remove all that stuff about elixirs for immortality and whatnot. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that's something that was bolted onto the initial ideological (core) tradition of the Tao and the origin of things. ↩