Making Peace with Frustration

Have you noticed that a single experience can change your perception of your day, transforming clear skies to gray (or vice versa) in the space of a breath? This was my experience just this morning.

I had necessary business to do with the DMV. I tried to make an online appointment, but no appointments were available for the week. I tried again the following week: still no appointments. I drove to the office at opening time, but there was a line out the door and no parking spaces were available in the lot. I thought: "I'll try tomorrow, and I'll get in line before the doors open." This I did. I found a parking place, and joined a queue of 15 or 20 other patient souls, waiting for the doors to open. Just on the hour, an employee appeared, telling us that the camera network was down, and any work that required a photo could not be accommodated.

Suddenly, there was a dark cloud over my head on what had been, until that moment, a sunny morning. My "inner dictator" who sets up an agenda for her day and expects things to bend to her will and go to plan, was enraged. The dark clouds had rolled in. Frustration with a capitol "F!" When I recognized this sea change of internal emotions, my first impulse was to push it away: "Be a big girl. Get in your car, put on some beautiful music, and forget it." But something else happened. I got fascinated with those dark clouds.

I let the frustration in. I wanted to feel it. I got curious about this inner shift from light to dark. I let myself be amazed (and even a little amused) by my own humanness. If I were to put words to this shift, it would sound a little like, "Okay, frustration, you are welcome here. I want to experience you, for as long as you choose to hang out here." Right there, in the middle of this storm of frustration, I felt a profound gratitude for my own humanity, for the whole keyboard of emotions. I was almost disappointed when, a few minutes later, that frustration had dissipated, and the sky was clear again.

I was still curious about frustration when I arrived home, so I looked up the source of the word. Frustration comes from the Latin frustrationem, "a deception or a disappointment." I thought dis-appointment (for that was what I lacked at the DMV) was appropriate, but the word "deception" was also apt. Was I deceived by the DMV? No. I think I was deceived by that inner dictator who had me believing things should always line up the way I plan them. When I was able to loosen my death grip on what should happen, I got curious about what the next moment in my day would hold. I didn't want to miss it, stewing over how things should have been.

I know that emotions are not good or bad. They are sources of energy, of information and of influence. Today I learned that they are also fine companions, in all their forms. I hope, whoever you are who reads this, that you can invite one of those "dark" emotions to the table today. Savor and befriend it. Don't push it away. Welcome, stranger!