How To Cope With Modern Inconveniences

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Philosophers tell us if we cultivate a generous amount of indifference to them, we can face life’s tribulations with a good deal of equanimity. This mind-set may indeed work with the more catastrophic situations fate visits upon us. Natural disasters, economic panics, or political upheavals that threaten to turn our world Topsy turvy we can learn to meet with an impassivity worthy of the strongest adherent to the school of stoicism.

But what about life’s lesser irritations, those we encounter on a daily basis? One ventures to observe that no amount of training or studied discipline can temper our irascibility when certain inconveniences crop up, some of them over and over again.

Let me illustrate with a few situations that you also may find irksome, how today’s “minor” inconveniences may, in the vernacular, drive one out of ones tree.

Let’s start with those remote controls often found hidden among the pillows and pads of the recreation room sofa. The remotes that come with your television set and DVD-VCR player have more buttons than a skyscraper elevator. The electronics whiz kid who sells you the set and player explains why they require the user to juggle three remotes: you need one for the TV, one for the DVD-VCR player and a three-pound sucker, so studded with buttons you can’t touch it without activating something, for the satellite or cable connection.

Of course, this same whiz kid tells you you will find instructions “in the box” outlining the programming steps needed to configure one of the remotes (you guessed it, the three-pound individual) so it will control all three components of your entertainment center. Have you ever attempted this procedure? If not, forget it! I have, and only succeeded in making myself and every other member of the household within hearing a nervous wreck.

The best you can do, then, is to manipulate the three remotes in a particular, unforgiving sequence, if necessary writing this vital information on a sticky note you press to the side of the television set. Don’t worry about all those buttons, the majority of which you’ll never use. A smear of paint or fingernail polish on the half dozen you will use will make it easy to locate them, even in the dark.