Psychological Tools to Survive Waiting in a Queue - (2125)

Sense of Importance

Balance, Majesty and Dignity

Within pride we find trapped, these three values of our Being says my marvelous missionary (which it seems for the purposes of this blog only, is also our marvelous missionary, as he is teaching us): balance, majesty and dignity.

Sense of ...

Coming from the balance aspect within pride are various 'senses of things', such as the sense of justice, the sense of fairness, the sense of balance, the sense of priority, the sense of correctness etc. 

Sense of Self-Importance

One of the senses as mentioned above that comes from this aspect of balance is the 'sense of importance'. As balance always needs a reference point (balance exists in relativity): "we are balanced in relations to something", "we are balanced in reference to somebody, something" we often make ourselves (which is different to our Being) the reference point then we have the 'sense of self-importance'.

When we begin to believe that we are important (assuming this 'sense of importance for ourselves as a person) we begin to create an "I", that has as its foundation this sense of importance relative to ourselves, and we call it the "I" of self-importance which is a branch of pride.

In a Queue

We have to wait in queues all the time, and we will have to wait in many queues in our future.

Often because precisely due to this "I" of self-importance waiting in a queue is very frustrating, difficult, anger provoking and silently very subconsciously humiliating. 

Observations

It is so typical of us when we are in a queue to begin to think: "I am in a hurry", "I need to get this done, it is important", "Someone please notice my urgency and serve me", "why aren't there more people serving", "why aren't they working quicker, can't they see how long the queue is?", "they just don't care!', "why is that guy taking so long, talking, he should be more considerate and be quick", "oh no that silly guy in front of me wants to do that and he is going to take ages, does he have to do it now?" etc.

These thoughts produce a kind of irritation, agitation in the human machine, along with a very impatient attitude that gives rise to an angry internal state.

All from the "I" of Self-Importance

All of the above observed thoughts are from the "I" of self-importance. The proof of this comes when we apply the understanding that our errand or task is not more important than that of anyone else, that the task of someone in the queue may be even more urgent than our task and that we are not more important than anyone else in the queue, and suddenly the thoughts stop and the agitation and impatience drops.

Why is my errand more important? Why should people somehow clairvoyantly notice how important my task is (when it is no more important in reality or in the grand scheme of things)? 

Maybe an answer is because I am running late! Is that the responsibility of anyone else in the queue? Why should they have to pay for something that we could have avoided with a touch more effort?

In Relationships

This "I" of self-importance is rife in relationships and is so painful and harmful! It is founded in the belief that in love we are more important and so we should comes first or be more important in the heart of others.

This "I" with this unquestioned and ignorant belief suffers immensely because the reality and truth is that we are not more important in the heart of others all of the time. Their Being is and sometimes for a short period of time others are and then sometimes we are. It changes, oscillates  and so we can not ever say that we are more important. It is best to think that we are important to them and that does not necessarily mean anything specific and physical, such as that they have to give all their time to us, or money or make great efforts for us.

Conclusion

The conclusion here is that this sense of importance applied to ourselves is the culprit to many of our sufferings in our relationships and in waiting in queues.

If when we are waiting in a queue we understand that we are no more important than anyone else and that our problem, issue, task etc. is no more than anyone else's we can calm ourselves down immensely.

This also works with our pains and suffering. When we don;t consider it more important than others this also reduces the psychological angst that we have related to it.

End (2125).