I mentioned, last week, frustration is often a sign that something is missing. That something that’s missing is often the piece of information that will liberate your frustration. This is the case with many other afflictive emotions too.
What’s NOT missing is blame, fault, intent, personality, and motive. These are further distractions from what is missing because these will only exacerbate your suffering. Hence it should be obvious that something would still be missing even if you could place blame–even if squarely on someone else–for your frustration. So don’t turn to these when you’re suffering, turn to an objective overview of the situation to find the bits and pieces of context that you aren’t seeing in the bigger picture.
If you refer back to the example in my prior post, when I couldn’t find Jonathan, thoughts like “he always seems to walk off when we’re in stores” won’t help my plight.