Hunting Dogs and Harvesting Oysters

"Irritation is the beginning of a Pearl."

This is a golden principle in our tribe. Every irritation has within it the potential for a pearl.

It's been an irritating morning so far - or a day filled with potential pearls!

Hunting Dogs

We'll come back to Oysters and Pearls later.

First, I want to share how clever Cape Hunting Dogs are. They hunt intentionally and intelligently in packs. Through collaboration, they can take down animals far more magnificent and stronger than themselves. They do this by being irritating in the extreme!

Hunting in hierarchical packs, they nip at their prey, causing eventual exhaustion through loss of blood and constant, relentless pursuit.

For many of us, this is a powerful metaphor for our lives! We can be worn down and then worn out not necessarily huge traumas but rather by relentless disappointments, irritations, and setbacks.

That is, unless we develop a strategy to deal with the dogs, and tactics to heal the wounds they inflict.

The Strategy for me is to preclude the 'bites' in the first place. The tactics are the learning I get from every irritation - the pearl of wisdom (and action) that arises from intentional reflection.

Trivial Pursuit

At huge risk of you despising how trivial I can be, I will share the literal irritations in the sequence they occurred from 4.30am this morning. None of these were biggies, but the day goes better for me if I've had enough sleep and my morning ritual is hassle free for the first hour.

I didn't have enough sleep and my first hour was hassle rich!

• Tesco Double Points voucher - "Aha!" I thought, "Go and get some wine on special AND get Double Points!" Irritation one - find the ***** voucher; irritation two - discover it expired yesterday!
• Can't find the adaptor I KNOW I put on the key tray so I can sort my Lion Head Water Feature out today... still can't find it. I suspect House Elves.
• Take Lady Penelope to work because she has a CT Scan tonight and I need to look after her... she forgets her ******* phone!
• Come back and Michael has turned the ******* outside light off so I have to fumble around in the dark
• The toilet roll - Michael never ****** replaces the toilet roll even though the new one is within easy reach. He expects the bathroom fairy to do this for him. He is thirty for goodness sake!
• Run bath to calm down. Plug's rubber washer has gone, so bath self-empties as I am making my cup of tea.
• Log on to email to get "Welcome Pack" from King's College before today's welcome webinar. Link forbidden (and I have to say every bit of IT interaction with King's so far has been hassle rich!
• Re-run bath and take a slurp of aforementioned tea - DISGUSTING!

I hope you are laughing at how shallow I can be! Why? Because I AM laughing at myself.

I entered the soothing waters of the newly drawn bath... and my inner person 'spoke' to me thus, "Irritation is the BEGINNING of a Pearl."

Together, me and the smarter me, enjoyed the bath while we came up with a tactic to sort out each and every one of the aforementioned irritations!

A Cunning Plan

I wont' take up your time with the solutions save for my cunning plan for dealing with Michael! Another golden principle is to never do for others what they can do for themselves (unless it's an example of you being thoughtful and considerate.) Michael needs to get into the habit of changing the toilet roll he has just exhausted. Just like learning to wash out hands after going to the loo, or after doing just about anything under the current regime.

So, I've left it empty and taken the next full one to my room! Like a student (which technically I now am again) I will keep my own pet toilet roll. Let's see what happens when he's got nothing to wipe his hind-parts with! (Cue evil laugh!) [Relax! I'm petty-minded at times, but well-able to act my age. I'll have an adult-to-adult conversation!]

The 'Cure' - I believe - it so consciously pay attention to every irritation and force yourself to find the beginning of the pearl in it. This way, life becomes an ever better learning journey.