Have a nice day.

How exactly are we to express our minute rage at those small injustices life gives us?

I am not talking about the real, big ones, the substantial affronts or serious injustices, the times when everyone agrees we have a right to our fury. But what I mean are the small things--the scheduling mishaps, the cuttings in line, the feelings badly expressed, the unintended insults, or perhaps bad climate conditions that do not lead to any real disasters. Because these things, too, generate their own small angers, the kind that leaves us not righteously indignant, but embarrassed at the smallness of our world-view. These are the times we feel like children, but unaccountably inhabiting overtall, overweight bodies, perhaps with less hair than we’d like, or more hips, but still wanting to let loose one of those completely-unaware-that-there-is-a-world-there wails, the kind where fresh tears come leaping out of your eyes, almost like in cartoons, and everyone around you, whether in our home or in an airport waiting area, has to feel our pain and just deal with it. But no, big person in your increasingly saggy and wrinkled skin, such an outburst is not something you can indulge.

Instead we must smile that furious smile we reserve for the people we cannot speak to, for fear of upsetting our karmic balance or getting ourselves in real trouble. These are the times we hope we are scoring real points, accumulating a case against someone who told us we have the tools to deal with life. We might imagine a courtroom scene with that person, where we lay out all our exhibits, each lettered in an alphabetic order that cannot really conceal our indignation. Because we have our positions ready: we can go forward with our opening arguments, our evidence, our peroration. Our case is irrefutable, really, and they should have made a deal with us before the jury marched in. But it is too late for that now, and we know we have victory locked up.

Assuming that there is any justice, really.