Yet Untitled Lite 021 - Families are Irritating
On the prickliness of closer than closeness
Dearest Yet Untitler,
Every time I need to ask myself multiple times - should I really write about this? - it usually means that I must! It mostly results in instalments that I enjoy writing more than others or end up receiving the maximum insight from. Let’s see if it holds true for this one.
Families.
I love my family. But there are times when they get my proverbial goat. The world is full of irritations. Poison Ivy is an irritant; but it’s one that you can walk away from. You cannot walk away as easily from family, essentially making them - at times - poison ivy that you carry inside your pants.
But I’m being unfair. To carry the plant analogy further - my family is made of shape shifting plants: sometimes sunflowers, sometimes prickly pears - another reason you cannot let them go. Also, your roots are all tangled up, so throwing them away would be throwing away a part of yourself. Tearing yourself away will result in a part of you being torn.
Today’s my dad’s birthday. I’ll evoke him via one of the most irritating things I found about him: My father had a particularly irritating habit of turning any good career news I gave him into a nothingness by immediately asking me whether it really meant anything for my career.
I’ll tell you how this fond son’s heart beating in my chest can justify exhibiting an irritating habit of his dad’s as a birthday evocation. I think it’s because, a few months before he passed, I got past the layers of irritation I had amassed towards him and this resulted in one of the most significant conversations we ever had.
I think there’s something to think about here.
My brother spent a good part of my life irritating me - mostly in a standard, big brother kind of way - until one day in my 20s I told him (a bit violently) this exactly - that he had spent a good part of his life irritating me. Interestingly, he stopped. Or did I stop being irritated by him anymore after finally telling him everything I’d kept bottled up?
I think there’s something to think about here as well.
I know from my Buddhist practice that the stuff that peeves you isn’t as much about the stuff itself. It’s about you. Me. I’m the one who carries the reactive substance to the stuff that irritates me within my own life. I believe it.
From the last two examples I gave from my family, this reactive substance is…
1) …limiting - preventing you from getting the most out of an important relationship.
2) This reactive substance that accumulates over time can indeed be defused by engaging with it in some way.
As far as accumulation goes, I observe that my life is human velcro, having accumulated all kinds of cues and impulses it has been exposed to. Since family is one of my primary interfaces in life, no wonder that I have accumulated layers of prickliness from my family’s sometimes thorny ways of being.
There’s another thing I notice within this theme of accumulation - that I sometimes catch myself exhibiting the exact same traits that I find irritating in my own family. Often it’s something I might say to my kids - and the moment I realise that I’ve done it, I’m struck by genuine wonder - how how how did I manage to replicate this very thing that gets my own goat from my own person towards another person??
I wonder - is the irritating trait a human archetype that I’m simply transmitting? If so, then I have my family to thank for giving me a point of reference to catch it in myself and perhaps deal with it.
However, irritating traits are so specific - specific words spoken in particular tones; certain specific sentences spoken at certain specific times - that they don’t feel like archetypes. Therefore, I wonder, dearest Yet Untitler, what makes me mimic those very things specific things that I should be able to see clearly and steer clear of? What makes me inflict those on others?
Perhaps there’s a sense of power in being able to direct someone’s feelings, and having realised this, perhaps I’ve weaponised these irritating traits and use them to my advantage. Since I know how the irritational trigger (lovely phrase!) works it’s magic on me, perhaps I know how to work it’s pissing off magic on others. Perhaps I cling onto it as something predictable in this otherwise, chaotic and unpredictable world.
But I tell you, my dear Yet Untitler, what a poisonous, worthless enterprise that is! I know it well whilst I exercise it now and again. But I know from that rare thing that I pulled off with my father - being able to break through those layers of irritation that separated us (mentioned above) - that it’s always worth freeing myself from this snare - to meet the precious beings under the layers of prickliness. They are the ones who matter. They are yours - warts and thorns and all! They are family!
A short one this week but let me not leave without leaving you with some entertainment. Below is a list of things that seriously irritate me.
Trashy American accents I hear on the young adult shows A and A watch. Oh my gawwwwd.
Hearing someone say anywhichways.
Being told to “kindly” do something.
Finding the toothpaste tube squeezed out from the top, not from the bottom.
Headaches.
Being told what’s for dinner early in the day, thinking about it constantly from that time onwards and then finding something else made and then fighting my irritation down because damn you gotta be grateful that someone’s cooked something for you!
Finding myself watching a film I did not want to see in a theatre, and finding that it sucks, then thinking about what else I could have done with the lost time.
Today being our 14th wedding anniversary, all irritations related to my beloved wife Vani are out of bounds 😂!
I realise that this one’s been a bit of a rant, so double thanks for listening!
V
PS. If you’re willing to share them, I’d love to hear about some of your pet irritations, especially form those close to you. Hit me with a comment!
lol. The older I get the more clear I get that the things that irritate me and my family members are usually things I don’t like in myself. My friend Oriah used to say, “ of course your family can push your buttons, they installed them.”
Happy anniversary 💕