Impatience

Nothing like the Christmas season to make one reflect on one's failings.

I'm impatient. I'm impatient with everything. Tonight, in my annual battle with Christmas lights and the tree, I went from being seasonably festive to curt and grumpy and relatively short order.

Why? The simple answer would be that I don't put lights on the tree very well. The more complex answer is the depths of my selfishness.

Impatience, at least to me, would seem to stem from a lack of getting my own way. I want things my way - and I want them that way now. I want my life to be pleasant. I want my children to be obedient, my job to be engaging (and well paying), my lights to go on my tree painlessly (and be full), never to meet with an obstacle.

Why? Because to have my will subverted - in small things or big - is for the little "me" of my world to be denied, thwarted.

I think as we get older, we are more prone to this simply because we have more parts of our lives that we can control. We can make many decisions on our own: what we wear, where we live, what we eat, much of what we do. It makes the thwarting of our wills all the more angering: if I'm an adult, I should be able to control most things that directly affect me. The fact that I can't is only a matter of scale: dictators attack enemies that do not bow to them, I grump at lights that won't go on a tree.

Given the chance, I might try to execute the lights as well...