How many times have you gotten upset because someone wasn’t doing their job, because your child isn’t behaving？How many times have you been annoyed when you’ve planned something carefully and things didn’t go as you’d hoped?
This kind of anger and irritation happens to all of us — it’s part of the human experience.
One thing that annoys me is when people talk during a movie. Or cut me off in traffic. Actually, I have a lot of these little annoyances — don’t we all? And it isn’t always easy to find peace when you’ve become upset or annoyed.
Let me tell you a little secret to finding peace of mind: see the glass as already broken.
See, the cause of our stress, anger and irritation is that things don’t go the way we like, the way we expect them to. Think of how many times this has been true for you. And so the solution is simple: expect things to go wrong, expect things to be different than we hoped or planned, expect the unexpected to happen. And accept it.
One quick example: on our recent trip to Japan, I told my kids to expect things to go wrong — they always do on a trip. I told them, “See it as part of the adventure.”
And this worked like a charm. When we took the wrong train on a foreign-language subway system, or when it rained on the day we went to Disney Sea, or when we took three trains and walked 10 blocks only to find the National Children’s Castle closed on Mondays … they said, “It’s part of the adventure!” And it was all OK — we didn’t get too bothered.
So when the nice glass you bought inevitably falls and breaks, someday, you might get upset. But not if you see the glass as already broken, from the day you get it. You know it’ll break someday, so from the beginning, see it as already broken. Be a time-traveler, or someone with time-traveling vision, and see the future of this glass, from this moment until it inevitably breaks. And when it breaks, you won’t be upset or sad — because it was already broken, from the day you got it. And you’ll realize that every moment you have with it is precious.
小题1:The author would probably agree that________.
A．we should control our anger and irritation
B．we must get well prepared for the future
C．optimism can help us overcome our anger and irritation
D．anger and irritation is an important part of our life小题2:The purpose of the author is to ___________.
A．tell us his own experience in life
B．give advice on how to find peace of mind
C．tell us a happy trip took with his children
D．advise us to see things from both sides小题3:By the underlined part, the author intends us to _____________.
A．get ready for the worst result of things
B．enjoy the process of things
C．expect little from life
D．find the relation between cause and effect小题4:The author’s children could enjoy their trip to Japan because _____________.
A．everything went smoothly
B．they had a lot of adventures
C．they had expected things to go wrong
D．they could soon get used to the customs there小题5:We can learn from the passage that the author ____________.
A．often gets angry in his life
B．can adjust his state of mind accordingly
C．always expects others to act in his way
D．has suffered a lot from his anger and irritation
