One thing my mother does that irritates me is endlessly complaining about her various injuries/pains. Not the complaining in and of itself because I know how wearing chronic issues can be. No, the annoying part is that a lot of it is self-inflicted. My mother is a very busy person and refuses to cut down on anything. Plus she’s an anxious person who is constantly looking for something that’s going wrong and is ruled by her anxiety. I get the latter thing because I’m like that, too. The only difference is that I keep it mostly to myself whereas she emotionally vomits all over about it to me.
She’ll tell me about this or that injury and most of the time, it’s because she’s trying to do five things at once, her anxiety makes her radically change what she was about to do, or she’s rushing from one place to another. I tried to tell her Master Liang’s mantra of ‘no hurry, no worry’ and how it was better to do something slowly and with intention (and it actually saved time in the long run). I could empathize with her because I tend to try to do ten things at one time, especially if it’s carrying things from one area to another. I have several burns because of this as I tried to carry my coffee/tea mug in the crook of my elbow. It’s a travel mug, yes, but there’s still an opening so I can drink from it.
The next time I talked to my mom, she proudly announced that she and my father had modified the saying to ‘no hurry, no going too slow.’ I didn’t say anything, but I rolled my eyes at her. Don’t worry, she couldn’t see because we were talking on the phone. That completely missed the point of the saying, but I knew why she did it. It was her fear of not getting everything done, of missing something important, and of being lazy. She’s driven to be the one to count on and in doing everything. I understand that. But, what I was trying to drive home to her was that if you took your time and did something properly the first time, you actually saved time in the long run. And pain.