Why Do You Let Things Bother You?

When I let something bother me then I am making a choice to lay down my peace of mind and replace it with irritation. Why do I do this?

Question: Do you value your peace of mind?

It’s not a question to move on from too quickly. Because if you do value it, then that leads to follow up questions such as: Then why do you play so fast and loose with it?

Let’s see if I can explain what I’m getting at…

“Man on Bench” by Duane Hanson at Crystal Bridges Museum

Your Experience of Your Life IS Your Life

My experience of any given moment, how I’m feeling right now, is my experience of my life.

It may not be an overstatement to say that how we are feeling right now is how you are feeling about your life. Yes of course there are ways to measure and assess our lives at a much higher level with much broader brush strokes. But I’m talking about the moment to moment way in which I, you, we experience our lives.

It is happening right now. Indeed, now is all there is. So whatever your experience of the Now is, IS how your currently experiencing Life.

Make sense? Cool.

Here’s the thing, though. Life is unpredictable. Full of difficulties and obstacles. And rarely (if ever?) are our environments perfectly matched to meet our every needs.

Which means we are constantly confronted by forces, interactions, and experiences that carry the potential to cause us discomfort or disturbance.

And then that means,

if I don’t figure out how to sort through things in HERE (points to head)

and in HERE (points to heart),

then my experience of my life will be one feeling of hard after another because I can’t do a darn thing about things out THERE (points to everywhere else in the Universe).

So to that end, I’ve been thinking about some the things that really bother me. The things that annoy me. That get under my skin and shift me from “one second ago I was feeling good, but now I’m feeling less-than-good.”

Because if I can be aware of what things bother me,

and if I can learn to notice when said bothering is happening in me,

and if I’m intentional about practicing taking responsibility for my part in it,

then perhaps I’ll experience the feelings of “being bothered” less often,

which could then mean that my experience of my life improves,

which ultimately means…

my life improves.

You with me so far? Good.

Then here’s a question:

Why do we let things bother us?

Before you begin building a rejoinder in your mind and argue with me that “I don’t LET things bother me, things are just that bad!” or “If I don’t let things bother me, doesn’t that mean I have a cold, hard heart?” hear me out.

1. Things can be bad and you can remain unbothered.

2. You can remain unbothered and still be a compassionate, soft-hearted person.

In fact, I would suggest that a sign of someone who is centered, grounded, and whose heart is open, is that they don’t get all hot and bothered by events happening all around them.

Or at the very least, they are extremely selective about when they choose to feel bothered.

In other words, getting bothered is their exception not the norm. (And if you think I’m intending to describe some zen monk who disciplines themselves to remain unattached—and therefore avoid suffering—that isn’t exactly what I have in mind, even if such an approach to life has its merits.)

No, I’m talking about a person who:

• stays somewhat connected or at least aware of the on-goings of the world (aka, not a head-in-the-sand pollyanna);

• someone who interacts with and engages with others (aka, not a recluse);

• someone who takes an interest in the problems of society and cares about the suffering of others (aka, not uncaring);

• someone who has desires and hopes and aspirations (aka, not apathetic);

and yet at the same time they rarely let things bother them.

Okay, perhaps now is a good time to explain what I mean by “bother.”

What’s in a Bother

When I say, “don’t let things bother you,” I’m using bother to mean annoy, irritate, or otherwise disturb you.

Typically the feelings of getting bothered by something or someone is the first level of feelings when we get activated. From there, and depending on the intensity and the context, our feelings may escalate to feeling upset, then distressed, then anguished, and I supposed feeling tormented would be the most extreme.

But bothered?

That’s the initial notification that our inner peace (assuming we have some to begin with) has been disturbed. It is a mild irritation. It’s the exhale of breath that causes the candlelight to flicker and dance, nearly getting snuffed out. It’s the subtle muscle twitch while trying to stand on one leg that threatens to throw us off balance.

It is, if we are honest with ourselves, a relatively small thing, yet a thing that annoys us nonetheless.

Here’s a few examples of things that cause feelings of annoyance and irritation to arise in me.

I get bothered…

• when people (at the beach, or camping, or on a hike) play music loud enough for anyone who isn’t them to hear it;

• when people are on their phone in public. (Look, that alone is enough to bother me, but it’s even worse when they’re walking while staring down at their phone; when they’re FaceTiming {or even just on a call} with the other person on speaker phone; when they’re mindlessly scrolling Reels or TikTok with the audio on but not using headphones);

• when people drive fast and reckless on the freeway, swerving in and out of traffic with abandon;

• when people hold tiny microphones while doing their Reels/TikToks;

• when people incessantly and needlessly say “right” at the end of their sentences.

Those things bother me.

Or, to be more precise—and to get to the heart of the question I started this post with—I let those things bother me.

Meaning, I am fully aware that the above behaviors are not inherently irritating or objectively annoying. And I can admit that they do not bother everyone (even though personally I wish they would!).

Once I admit that, then I am invited to take responsibility for my own feelings.

If those things bother me—and they do—it’s because I let them.

In other words, the Bad News is that the things that bother me are not inherently or objectively wrong, which means I cannot expect humanity to evolve beyond them and do better. The world will not get fixed according to my preferences, sadly.

But the Good News?

I can do something about me.

I can’t change you (and your choice to play music at the beach, or stare at your phone while walking through the airport, or scroll loudly through TikTok at a restaurant, or say “right” at the end of every other sentence), but because I’m now aware that my feelings of irritation/bothering/annoyance happen because I let them happen, then that means I have some agency here.

I’ll say more about that agency and what it looks like in a future post, but for now it’s enough just to sit with the question:

Why do you let things bother you?

If you’d like to play along, make a list of the things that bother you.

Then, be mature enough to own that these things bother you, not everyone, therefore you have some responsibility for how you feel.

Finally, see what comes up when you ask yourself, “Okay, well then why do these things bother me?”