Growing up it was a rare occurrence to see my father truly upset or mad. It’s true that my sister and I were better behaved than most kids – that tends to happen when you have to start helping care for your mother by the time you’re eight – but we were not angels, and there were plenty of opportunities for dad to get upset with us. Despite this, he would rarely get mad. One day, after doing something that I was sure would result in at least a few fireworks, and getting none, I actually asked him why he didn’t get upset more often. After all, my friends talked about their parents blowing gaskets on a regular basis. Then my dad said something that has stuck with me ever since. He said, “Kid, there are better things to get upset about in this life than (insert whatever dumb but inane thing I had done).”

There are better things to get upset about.

How simple, yet profound is that statement. Think about all of the things that you got upset about in the past week, the past month. How many of them, in retrospect, weren’t really that big of a deal? I’m gonna guess most of them. That’s at least what I discovered when I really started looking at the things that I got upset about. So I stopped. Now don’t get me wrong, I have my moments and I’ve definitely gotten upset with people, but years later, I find that like my father, it takes a lot to get me truly upset or mad. I’ve learned that I have better things to expend my energy on. I choose my battles. However, what I’ve recently come to discover is that it really goes beyond choosing your own battles because when you get upset you’re actually choosing a battle for someone else as well.

I work with a couple of people who get upset about everything, and I mean everything! We’re talking if somebody moves their lunch from one side of the fridge to the other on the wrong day then somebody is getting yelled at, and not necessarily the person who moved the lunch. I’ve seen it time and time again and what I’ve noticed is that it becomes this horrible chain reaction. Person 1 gets pissed off so they yell at Person 2. Person 2 is now upset because they were yelled at, so they take it out on Person 3. Person 3 is now in a bad mood so they take it out on Person 4, etc. It keeps going until somebody finally takes the abuse, but instead of passing it on, they let it roll off their shoulders and they greet the next person they see with a smile instead of a frown. It keeps going until somebody finally realizes that they didn’t do anything wrong, that the other person is having some sort of an issue. It keeps going until someone decides that there are better things to get upset about. But who knows how many people have been negatively affected by the time you get to that last person who chooses to let that battle pass them by.

Think about it, how many times have you been around someone who gets upset at everything and then watched as that ire is passed on to someone else. It’s like a virus and I’ve realized that I’ve come to a point in my life that I don’t have time for people like that. I realize that there are better things to get upset about than the ordinary idiocy of everyday life, and with that I realize that there are better people to spend my time with than those who get worked up over the smallest infraction. I guess I feel like life is too short to be mad all day.