No longer waste your energy on anger and its milder cousin, frustration. Don’t be put out by all the things you are put out by. One thing after another seems to bother you.

Every new street corner you come to is different from the one before. You love wide avenues and roads with terraces in the center, yet you are not aggrieved when streets present themselves otherwise. You don’t say: “Those streets. What’s the matter with them? Why aren’t they all beautiful the way I like them to be?”

But is this not what you do with people? You want them to be different from how they appear to you.

Do you not aggravate because one smokes, another eats meat, because one dresses boldly and another dresses blandly, because one is self-centered and doesn’t pay attention to you, and another doesn’t seem to care about you either? What do you not aggravate about? You would prefer that everyone you meet be a perfect rendition of what you most favor in that particular time and place.

Find that which you do like. Never mind the rest.

The person before you, no matter how heartless, mindless, aggravating etc. is as brave in the world as you are. He often feels unlistened to, too. He often feels discounted, unimportant, and unheard. Like you, he has come to a world that is not always friendly, and he has no armor to wear, nothing to shield him. He may not be so in love with his personality either.

You want someone else to change his way of being, his attitude, what he thinks, the words he uses, how he conducts himself, how he walks and how he chews and every other little thing under the sun. Your racing mind simply won’t leave him alone in the forest of your imagination. You harp on him mentally often. You don’t have to speak your thoughts in order to harp on him. While there are more important things to think about, you wrap your thoughts around all your little irritations and make them big.

When something major manifests in your life, then you feel the smallness of all the things that bothered you so much before. The contrast between them and what has befallen is so great that you almost don’t know what to make of it.

You don’t really want these people to vanish from the face of the Earth. You may even find you become fond of them. You may not have appreciated someone in life, yet when they die, you feel a loss. Feel the gain while someone is here. Make hay while the sun shines. Pick the crop that is before you. In winter, do not bemoan what you left fallow.

Relationships are not so easy in the world. Bodies and personalities get in the way. And befuddlement and hurt are always caused by the other person, you feel, and they feel the same about you. Whatever the grievance, beloveds, if you have it, it’s yours.

When you walk down the street, you do not aggravate over every crack in the sidewalk or muddy puddle or fallen ice cream cone. You don’t pick them up in your heart and mind and tear them apart over and over again.

Beloveds, pick some flowers by the side of the road, Pick up a penny. Do anything else rather than hold on to what aggravates you. Let it be gone. You don’t have to keep it. You can let it go. It doesn’t have to bother you. Find more important things to attend to.