Pet Peeves

Have you ever been annoyed?  With me?  Me too.  But, what I want to talk about today is something that annoys me about other people.  I call it the bouncy ball effect.

For those of you who don’t know, most basic “things” in nature (like pressure, heat, fluid currents, friction, etc) can be explained by thinking of matter as being made up of little rubber bouncy balls with different shapes, sizes, and bounciness levels — constantly whizzing around, or jiggle-joggling in heaps.  I suppose you’re thinking that sounds pretty inoffensive, huh.  Maybe even sort of whimsical and pleasant?

Do NOT be fooled.  Those little bouncy balls are TOTALLY frustrating, when you compare what they could accomplish in theory with what they actually do in real life.  For instance:  The molecules that make up the air you’re breathing right now are zooming around at about 6,000 mph.  If you could get them to make up their minds, and quit changing directions 1.5 billion times every second, a single lungful could knock down a wall without any extra effort!  But sadly, those speedy air molecules, for all their potential, will never make such a decision.  In fact, if left to themselves, these indecisive molecules will never travel more than a few micrometers from where they are right now — their most noticeable achievement being that that the room will remain room temperature.  :-(

Believe it or not, it’s EVEN MORE frustrating to me when I see people doing the same thing.  There seem to be people who have been given brains, talent, and good looks — people who could literally do anything they wanted to with their lives — that are frittering away their lives because they refuse to choose a clear direction.  There is SO MUCH ineffective action in the world already; and it is almost maddening when I see great people who begin a great work only to immediately change their minds and attempt to accomplish something completely different.  It’s not so much the choices themselves that annoy me. It’s the knowledge that the very act of drastically changing directions will dwindle one’s resources and energies to almost nothing.

So, if you’ve started to climb a mountain, and half-way up, you realize that it’s not the exact mountain you REALLY wanted to climb, just go ahead and climb to the top.  The view will be much better from there then from going straight back down to the valley!