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I’ve been catching myself overly frustrated with my kids sometimes recently. As usual, it wasn’t really that anything changed with them. I was the one who changed.
I have two teenagers and a 6-year-old and… they act like teenagers and a 6-year-old many days. So that means my littlest one walks into a room where I’m on the phone with a work colleague and she pulls on my arm and says, “Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad?” until I acknowledge her and immediately get her whatever she’s asking about. My teenagers are moody and impulsive and self-centered.
I usually get extremely frustrated and bark at them for whatever transgression they dared throw at me.
As I think about that it’s like… Uh, so they act exactly as you would think a person that age would? And also, um, they want what they want when they want it… can’t think about anybody but themselves sometimes… can go from sad to mad to laughing to sad again in 30 seconds? Hmm, does that sound like anybody I know? Maybe the fact that those are some of my worst character defects these days has something to do with it.
Here’s the other thing that has been striking to me: I’ve been catching myself being overly kind and forgiving of strangers at the same time. I was at a chaotic grocery store the other day and waited 10 minutes in the self-checkout line before, finally, it was my turn. And—some old dude swooped right in front of me and started ringing up items.
I shook my head and stewed to myself for a few seconds, but then he noticed that he’d skipped right past the line. He stopped scanning items and made eye contact with me and began to profusely apologize. I of course went from shaking my head in disgust to being like, “Oh no, sir, you go ahead. I’m in no rush. No big deal. Don’t worry about it.” I was two seconds away from offering to pay the guy’s bill when he got done.
Have I been as forgiving of my own loved ones recently? No way. You jump in front of me when I’m heading into the bathroom or trying to get to the fridge? Not happening. You’re going to get a very grumpy father.
Part of the problem here is beyond me. I’m not built for spending basically 24 hours a day, for a year-and-a-half, cooped up in the house with anybody, even loved ones. I guarantee you a few months into a pandemic with that old dude at the grocery store, I’d be sick of him and overreacting, too. So I want to make sure I’m not beating myself up too bad. Seems pretty normal right now for people to be getting irritated with their loved ones after so much time together.
The other part of this that it’s good to identify is the buildup of gunk in longterm relationships. A kid getting too pushy about something shouldn’t be a huge ordeal, but the fact that it’s Too Pushy Incident No. 3,491 matters. My patience wears out pretty quickly in general, and patience can also be something that erodes over time, too. That causes me to go to a high level of annoyance in a hurry.
What’s the solution for that? Well, I might need to do a Fourth Step and work through where some of the resentments are coming from and what my role in each of them is. I have a feeling I know what I am going to find—that I am responsible for getting five times more aggravated than I should, and that I need to find a way to inject more spirituality into the situation. That could be praying. That could be an extra meeting or two per week. It could mean praying for my kids—I love that tool in recovery where for 14 days in a row, you pray for somebody on your shitlist and wish them well. It has worked almost every single time I have ever done it.
I might even throw in a prayer for that old dude who had the audacity to jump the grocery store line!
ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke.
At a recent AA meeting, a long-winded speaker began describing every detail of his drinking. After an hour, when the meeting was supposed to end, half the audience got up and left. However, the speaker just kept talking. So half an hour later, several more people left. The speaker kept right on talking. Half an hour later, everyone else in the audience got up and left—everyone except one woman.
At last, the speaker wrapped it up. “Oh my gosh!” he said, looking at his audience. “Where did everybody go?”
“You talked so long they left,” the woman replied.
“That’s terrible! I had no idea I was going on so long,” the speaker exclaimed. “But tell me, why did you stay?”
“I’m the next speaker,” she replied.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2000, Anonymous from Manhatten, New York)
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