Annoyance and Its Remedy

An act of kindness for its own sake…

I try to keep a chipper disposition, get plenty of rest, meditate, practice gratitude, all the things suggested to keep your head on straight. But lately, I’m annoyed. Annoyed with the world and its foolishness. Annoyed at being annoyed.

Imagine how annoyed I’d be if I didn’t rest, meditate, and be grateful (even if begrudgingly)?

I shan’t burden you with the litany of reasons why I felt annoyed. You can probably guess.

As I walked down Sacramento Street on my afternoon walk today, I saw a homeless man on the far corner. Not an unusual sight. It would have been more unusual if a homeless man wasn’t on this particular corner. When he saw me approaching he lifted his tattered cardboard sign for me to see. I can’t remember exactly what it said, but the gist was a greeting instead of an ask — “God bless you, have a good day” or something instead of “Give me money”.

These days, I rarely walk around with much — or any — cash. That’s what debit cards are for. (For the youngsters out there, “cash” is an analog form of money using fancy paper bills and metal coins to denote a specific sum of currency. It’s what we oldsters used as money for many years. That and paper checks. We’ll save that for another story — I digress.