Frustration is a result of pride.

I guess.

That’s all I can figure out at the moment, because after a few intensely frustrating hours of life, I feel shallow and pitiful trying to maintain my anger at things not going the way I want them to go. It feels childish to sit here at my desk and avoid paying bills by feeling persecuted because other people aren’t behaving as robotically as I expect them to. It feels so wrong, in fact, that I know there must be something deeply wrong about it.

Whining sucks. I know this from experience with it. It’s not an act I found as distasteful before having children. Now that I have dealt with it consistently for a few years, I understand those people who adamantly oppose it, to the point that it’s number one on a list of pet peeves, if not a justification for crimes against humanity. Bur I’ll admit not knowing exactly why society backs me up when I tell my kid to stop whining. I assume it is because of its communicative disadvantages. Kids whine when they want something. Parents don’t respond well, and so the something is not gotten. (At least not at first, thinks the little brat.) As a negotiating tactic, whining fails more than it succeeds. Too bad I never took a World History course in college, or else I could offer an example of some war and make a joke about whining and the treaty and whatever.

But I guess the real aversion to whining is that it detracts from the group, the whole, the society. Listen to someone whine about something, anything, for long enough and they will eventually complain about something ridiculous. What starts as an honest airing of grievances against the universe will quickly become a laundry list of mediocre annoyances. The whining is annoying, so I can talk myself out of it. But what about the root of it, the frustration?

One of the greatest theological concepts I ever learned is that sin exists in the extremes of self-concept. Most sin is the result of either thinking too much of ourselves or thinking too little. Humility may be the opposite of pride, but not its polar opposite. That would be the sin of self-hate. If you’re not the prideful type, and yet you’re miserable, it’s likely that you’ve fallen into the this extreme. One of the many ill effects of pop theology is that the Church is always telling people how evil humanity is. Fallen, we say. Natural sin, we say. And while it’s a firmly-held and respectable theological belief to say that we are born sinful, I don’t buy it. (That one might warrant a post or two later, eh?) What I’m meaning to say here is that we’re so obsessed with original sin that we push people into the sin of self-hate. “Feel lousy?” asks the Church, “You are!” The way out, we tell them, is acknowledgement and dependance on a Higher Power. Therapeutic? Or just therapy?

So is frustration merely a part of the human condition? Just a result of the evil air we breathe? Or is it an awareness at our eventual utter inability to accomplish the ideals we imagine? Or (or) is it like the siren drone of an alarm clock while we’re comfortably asleep? A reaction to a necessary and beneficial outward stimuli. Maybe frustration is an inward realization–a call to change from what we want in favor of what others need. Socially, it tells us we are not everyone’s boss. Spiritually, it reminds us, pushes us, to pray as Jesus did in a time of frustration, “not my will, but Yours.”