Self inflicted

80% of what we suffer is self-inflicted. If we make a list of what goes wrong in our lives, the list becomes endless.

It’s too cold (or mild, or rainy, or windy) for the season.

A saucepan is so encrusted with burnt food that it has to be soaked, then scrubbed by hand instead of being simply shoved in the dishwasher.

We look for something small at the bottom of a big bag ; we know it’s there but we can’t find it. In the end, we have to tip the whole content of the bag out onto a table, and sure enough, what we were looking for is right there, staring us in the face.

Our next-door neighbour is setting up a water tank. He goes to the DIY store three or four times in the course of a morning, his trailer clanging noisily behind his car.

The computer is attacked by a virus.

It could go on and on. In the evening, exhausted, we find that one of our favourite television programmes has been replaced by football or athletics. That’s the last straw. We go to bed with a headache, then we can’t even fall asleep. We are profoundly unhappy. 

Tell that to a paraplegic, a man with an incontinence bag or a woman dying of bone cancer !

Things do indeed go wrong all the time. Let's not see it as a series of attacks on ourselves. We are not the centre of the universe.