Small inconveniences are an inseparable, though unimportant, part of life. A time may come when the world is rid of grave injustices and misfortunes like poverty and disease, but it is difficult to believe that life can ever be free from small worries and annoyances. Most of them are unpredictable, and wisdom lies in accepting them as inevitable and putting up with them as gracefully as one can.
Not a week passes without some small annoyance or other. You are ready to leave the house to keep an important appointment, and there is a sudden downpour of rain, which doesn’t intend stopping in a hurry. You have taken a lot of trouble to reach the railway station in time for the train only to learn that the train is late by three hours. While going to school or office, you may slip on a banana skin and be laughed at by urchins. When you want to be dressed in your best you find that the dhobi has not turned up, or if he has, the collar and cuffs of your finest outfit are frayed. It would be easy to multiply examples or small troubles that people face one time or other.
Some people bother too much about the small inconveniences of life and always complain about them. They make mountains out of molehills and make themselves unnecessarily miserable. They are usually the people who have been lucky enough to escape from the big troubles of life. Those who have endured great sorrows and misfortunes are not likely to grumble about small troubles. Hence it is difficult to sympathies with those who find little worries most overwhelming. Their miseries are unreal, and they have no right to complain about them. On the contrary, they should be grateful to God that they have been spared the bitter hardships and misfortunes of life.
Imagination and a sense of humour will help one to tide over the small difficulties of life. It is possible to laugh away some of them or regarding them with detachment, to enjoy the comedy of the situation. Alternatively, one can see poetic or symbolic meaning in some small inconveniences.
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In one of his essays G.K. Chesterton tells us that when once he was unable to open a drawer he regarded it as a giant and himself as a medieval knight battling with it. At last, after wrestling with it for a long time he did succeed in opening it. He did not feel at all the fret and exasperation associated with such a difficulty. Again, there is such a rich material for observation and imagination at a railway station that there is no reason why anybody should complain of having to wait there on certain occasions.