life on planet earth on Irritations

Most of us are aware of the fact that pearls come from oysters, but do you know how they are formed? It all begins with an irritation. Some foreign particle, for example, a piece of sand, works its wa...

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Patience is like good motor oil. It doesn't remove all the contaminants. It just puts them into suspension so they don't get into your works and seize them up. Patient people have, so to speak...

“I never work better” Martin Luther once said, “than when I am inspired by anger; for when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding ...

Communicating with people is often easier said than done. Take for instance this apocryphal story of the census taker who had to venture many miles down a country road to reach a cabin. As the man pul...

Best-Selling leadership author Stephen Covey tells the following story about an incident he experienced in the New York subway system, an experience that would radically alter his perception of what i...

The incarnation means that for whatever reason God chose to let us fall . . . to suffer, to be subject to sorrows and death—he has nonetheless had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine....

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything onto which it is poured.

The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashio...

One of our main problems is that in this chatty society, silence has become a very fearful thing. For most people, silence creates itchiness and nervousness.

Anxiety sparks when a perspective we value bumps into another perspective that challenges it in some way. If we find this new perspective to be unacceptable, that’s when our “Someone is wrong on the i...

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

We need the interruption of the night To ease attention off when overtight, To break out logic in too long a flight, And ask us if our premises are right.

We want to be interrupted, because each interruption brings us a valuable piece of information. To turn off these alerts is to risk feeling out of touch, or even socially isolated.

Offending people is a necessary and healthy act.  Every time you say something that’s offensive to another person, you just caused a discussion.  You just forced them to have to think.

Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complain...

Frustration is something that does not exist—except within the self. It translates my world to me through the filter of my own need to control it. Frustration becomes the space we put between ourselve...

It’s hard to be religious when certain people are not struck by lightning.

Why do any of us get upset or tense when confronted? Why do any of us activate our inner lawyer and rise to our own defense? Why do any of us turn the tables and remind the other person that we are no...

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.

The contemporary ventilationist view, that it is always important to express anger so that it won’t clog your arteries or your friendships . . . tends to overlook . . . the consequences of anger. If y...

In this tragic world, we are surrounded by discontented people. Every minute of the day, it is possible to see evidence of this restless discontentment in the way people respond to circumstances. Peop...

It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I’m right.

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. We injure our own cause in the opinion of the world when we too passionately defend it.

It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.

The political cartoonist and Op-Ed writer Tim Kreider has provided us with some insight into the “world of outrage” we currently inhabit. A world that has been amplified by the dawn of the Internet an...

The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.

The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.