Troubles come in different sizes, and yet your response is often more dire than the size of the trouble. When you are fit-to-be-tied, you are fit-to-be-tied in an extra large size! Is this not true? The tiny upsets seemingly upset you as much as the big upsets. Upset is upset. What are We going to do about your having One Size Fits All?

So many of your upsets are about tiny things that don’t matter a hoot, and yet your being upset has made a little thing into a catastrophe. It is as if you have one slot to insert any-sized trouble. This is a form of smallness, beloveds, when you make a little thing big. Sometimes it seems that you have an annoyance quotient that you feel you must fill. What would you do, beloveds, without your flare-ups? What would you do with all your energy if nothing got to you? Yet annoyances, big or small, get to you. They rub you the wrong way. Annoyances are intolerable to you, even when they are about nothing at all.

Cut your annoyances down to size now. Someone else has another way to do mundane things, and they try to impose their way on you. You must admit that the littlest thing can set you off. The fact is you don’t want anyone telling you what to do or how to do it. You don’t unless you ask, and even then, sometimes you don’t really want to hear.

Ah, beloveds, no longer can you expect everyone to dance to your tune, even when others seem to expect you to dance to theirs. How important are details anyway? People are going to see as they are going to see. Let them. You are not going to change them. They, however, may think they are going to change you. And if they succeed, what have they got? What do they think they got? An admission that they are right and you are mistaken?

The real question is: What is important to you? And its corollary is: What is important to another? What heads your list, and what heads others’ lists. Is this not the issue?

One person is obliged to neatness, and another is obliged to function. Neither is right, and neither is wrong. There is no one right way, and there is no one wrong way. Nevertheless, even on little matters, judgment pushes its way to the fore. A little of everything may be a good thing, but not judgment. Judgment has to be thrown out. Judgment does not belong. Judgment has no right to impose itself. Let Hands Off be your motto even when it appears not to be another’s.

What is not someone else’s business isn’t your business either, yet you become haughty when someone minds your business, and then you take that as a reason to mind theirs. You want your own free-wheeling space, and someone has stepped on your territory. They overstepped their bounds. And then your mind becomes involved in boundaries.

The sum of many annoyances is like this: You want to paint your fence red, let’s say. It is your fence. You’ll paint it any color you like. You will buy the paint, and you will do the painting. Then someone tells you that you should paint your fence green or white. You let someone else’s comment – and that is all it is – a comment – you let their comment throw you in a tizzy. Do they have to agree with you? Do you have to agree with them? No, you don’t. They may not know that, but you know that. Give yourself free choice then, and give others their free choice to express their opinion too. It is a given that you will paint your fence as you please. You don’t have to make a big announcement about it.

You so want to live and not be bothered. So, then, beloveds, live and not be bothered! Try smiling instead.