Bothered by My Teachers

It started with the air.

Not a loud bang, not a crisis. Just the simple fact of waking up too early because the bedroom was too hot. The kind of heat that presses up against your skin like an unwelcome guest. I didn’t wake up angry. Or so I thought. I woke up bothered.

That’s the thing—bothered is like the gateway emotion. It’s annoyance in yoga pants, pretending to stretch while it’s actually just lurking.

I shuffled into the kitchen, already running behind the schedule I hadn’t officially made, only to find there was no honey for my tea. Not a tragedy, right? That’s what the rational voice said. But the smaller, sharper voice inside me whispered: Of course. Of course there’s no honey.

I brushed it off. Even when my first client canceled—a client I’d bent over backward for—I told myself it was fine. “You needed a break anyway,” I said aloud, as if I were someone who actually believed that.

The day moved on, with small things rolling in like pebbles in a shoe. And as the ancient teachers would say, it wasn’t the pebbles—it was the fact I didn’t stop to take off the shoe.

Passing by the dog that always growls at me was the next stone. He growled like he does every morning, a gruff, old-man sort of growl. Normally, I laugh it off. But today it landed. Right in the middle of my chest, like he wasn’t just growling at my ankles but at my very existence.

You really don’t like me, huh? I said to him in my mind.

Now, here’s where philosophy usually says: “The world is your mirror.” But in the moment, all I wanted was for that mirror to crack a little.

Then came the audiobook situation. I was getting ready for a long drive, and buying a new book felt like the thing that might save the day. But suddenly, according to the app, I no longer existed. “No account found,” it said. Ten years, hundreds of purchases. “That’s impossible,” I told the customer service person.

Her voice was pure corporate honey. “Ma’am, it must have been a glitch all this time. You were lucky.” Lucky! That’s what she called it.

And there it was. The shift. I wasn’t just bothered anymore. Now I was properly irritated. My shoulders were up around my ears, my jaw a tight knot of unspoken words. I hung up before I said something both profound and regrettable. Instead, I decided to fix my nail. One simple thing. I’d had my nails done a few days ago, gel polish that should last three weeks, but one nail had chipped. I figured if I could just set that right, it would reset the rest of the day. The woman at the salon nodded and fixed it quickly. I paid, walked out to the car, glanced down—and there it was. Blue.

Not sky blue. Not ocean blue. But definitely not green like the rest of my fingers.

I took a breath. Yogis talk about that pause: the sacred space between action and reaction. So I went back inside and showed her the blue nail.

“No,” she said, with a smile too wide to trust. “It’s the same color.”

I held up my hand. Green nails… and one very obviously blue one.

“The others are old. It will look the same again in a few days,” she insisted. And then—then—she laughed. And I knew: the universe was really showing off today.

Now, in some corner of my mind, I remembered what the old texts suggest. That life is a game. A divine play. The things that irritate us most are often the things we most need to see. That the blue nail isn’t the problem. It’s the part of me that wants so badly for everything to line up just so. That tight grip on how things should be.

But I wasn’t there yet. I filed the nail straight myself. Blue, but at least straight.

When I pulled into my driveway, I noticed the workers had left behind a mess. Wrappers, gloves, stray bits of debris swirling in the wind. At that point, I had to laugh. Not the dry, bitter kind of laugh—but the real thing. The shake-your-head, okay, I get it kind.

Because here’s the truth:

It wasn’t the heat, or the honey, or the growling dog, or the blue nail, or the trash. It was me. I’d been carrying irritation like an invisible suitcase since before I even opened my eyes. Like someone handed me a bag of rocks and I forgot to put it down.

The old teachings say the mind is like a lake. Smooth when still, but pick up just one small pebble of annoyance, and suddenly there are ripples all the way across. And we walk around blaming the lake instead of looking at the rock in our hand.

Back in the house, I sat down and looked at my hand. One blue nail.

Maybe it was there as a reminder. A string tied around my finger. A signal that all these little “problems” aren’t obstacles. They’re invitations. Opportunities to soften. To let go. To remember that this isn’t really who I am: the person getting worked up over a glitch in an account or a mismatched color. Those are just waves. Underneath it, there’s something quieter, steadier.

I passed by the dog again as I went outside to clear the trash. He growled. But this time, I heard it differently. It wasn’t about me. It never was.

Maybe the dog’s been my teacher all along. And maybe, just maybe, the blue nail was too.

Hari  Om Tat  Sat