Now here’s an inspired explanation! (-:
Imagine that you’ve wandered out to do a bit of light gardening — tend to the flowers, pick strawberries, check for ripe fruit swinging from the trees, whatever. A few butterflies flutter across your field of view, adding some bright colour & gentle activity. Nice, isn’t it?
OK, now let’s vary this scene a bit.
Instead of, say, three butterflies, let’s say that you’re joined by... well, π,000 (3,142) of them. They get in your hair, you can’t see anything worth describing, the gentle tickle of hundreds of little legs (as they walk on you) gets distracting, you can’t breathe in without inhaling one, they’re sitting on whatever you try to pick up (when you can actually see it), you’d be treading on them with each step... they’re everywhere... you’ve got chronic butterflies. Not so nice, is it?
So with many otherwise good things in life.
Say you’ve got several children to look after. Bright, cheerful, talkative (ask interesting — sometimes terrifying — questions from time to time), playful etc. But you’re the only one there to look after them. Turn your back, & things go missing... or get destroyed (seldom, thankfully, the children themselves)... or get dirtied... or get hungry... or get wet... or worse...
Individually, each problem is trivial to solve. However, you have lots of problems to solve, which tend to arrive in bunches & build up, no time to solve them in, more arriving every minute, & you have to share your attention between the problem-sources plus whatever else you might happen to be doing.
A couple of hours of this, & you can easily see how the most patient, angelic, peaceful parents can get a bit nippy, or hasty, or grumpy, or whatever very quickly whilst managing the most wonderful children (that bystanders regularly offer to adopt).
The difference is that term “chronic.”
There is no rest, no breaks, no golden fairy-ladies waving shimmering wands, nothing to give you time to solve enough of the issues to get ahead, stay ahead — ghasp, maybe even find time for yourself!
When you wind up jammed in this situation, there is always the assurance that no matter how fantastic, no matter how competent, no matter how resourceful they may be, others have been brought down as low as you (probably lower) facing the same, chronic, situations.
You ain’t a loser, you just happen to be here. (-:
Oh, yes... feel that sympathy? No? Grumble. Transmitter must be broken...
Comments