Frustration

Every so often, you need to go back to the first few sto­ries of Gen­e­sis and get the para­me­ters of where you are in life. Accord­ing to the story of the Fall, life became more frus­trat­ing. In short, we are not in the Gar­den of Eden any­more (just in case you have not noticed).

Expect frus­tra­tion to be a con­stant. That is not to be a pes­simist, but it is a reminder about how things work (or fail to work) in this par­tic­u­lar real­ity. No one will see any­thing per­fectly. We will have to rely on teams of detached observers for accu­racy. There is a lit­tle bit of illu­sion in just about every­thing. Even pro­fes­sion­als fall into “group-think” syn­dromes. The blind do indeed end up lead­ing the blind.

Once you accept frus­tra­tion as a part of this life, you can do some con­struc­tive things about it. Per­son­ally, I give it the spin that it is there to teach me patience. Reject­ing it as a fact of life only strength­ens it. Every so often you will have to fix a flat on your car in the rain…and notice the a tool was not included in your car…and then dark­ness sets in and the wind begins to blow.

When you hit reality’s wall, then you can sur­ren­der and laugh about it. Maybe there is a deeper mes­sage in a par­tic­u­lar frus­tra­tion. Maybe God is try­ing to tell you some­thing and can only get your atten­tion by maroon­ing you somewhere.

Frus­tra­tions present new oppor­tu­ni­ties. If you are a per­fec­tion­ist, this one will be tough for you to man­age — at least at first. You may be inclined to make a con­test between the uni­verse and your own will power (by the way, you will lose). Will power is not the answer to frus­tra­tion, but per­spec­tive is. Frus­tra­tion can be the launch­ing pad for spir­i­tual transcendence.