A man pulled off to the side of the road because something was wrong with one of his tires. When he opened the trunk of his car, he saw that he didn’t have a tire iron. He looked around and noticed he wasn’t far from a farmhouse, however, so he walked toward it in hopes that the person living there would have a tire iron.
Along the way, he started to think, “This is so much farther than I thought,” and “He might not even have a tire iron,” and “What if he has one, but doesn’t want to be bothered?” and “He probably won’t even open the door for a stranger,” and “This is a waste of time!” He thought negative thought after negative thought until he finally arrived at the door of the farmhouse. He rang the doorbell, but he couldn’t stop his negative thoughts from escalating and making him angrier and angrier. By the time the farmer opened the door, the man just screamed out, “You can keep your stupid tire iron!”
This story is humorous and seems a bit ridiculous until we reflect on the innumerable times we have gotten angry with others for no real reason at all. How many of us create problems in our own minds and then look for those problems to be played out in the real world? We imagine that the world should be the way we demand it to be, then we suffer by remaining trapped in our own angry minds.
The intelligent are aware that they create unnecessary anger; but the wise are those who let go of the unnecessary anger in their lives.