Last week I stopped in at Tim Hortons on my way to work. I ordered a coffee with milk and sugar, and a bagel toasted with butter. The young person at the window took my money and gave me my stuff without a single word being spoken; no “good morning” or “thank you” or “have a nice day”. I got back to the church and lifted my coffee cup out of the holder to discover that it had a hole in it. Not big enough that all the coffee spilled out, but big enough that there was a small puddle of coffee in the bottom of my cup holder. When I opened it up and took a sip, I tasted cream instead of milk. Finally, when I cracked open my bagel, it was as dry as a desert. One tiny splotch of butter in one corner hinted that at least an attempt had been made. ARRGGHH!!!!
I felt IRKED. That was the best word to describe my mood.
Irked is an interesting word. It seems to describe a feeling that is somewhere between miffed and upset. It doesn’t make you angry enough to make a scene (not that I ever would), but it’s enough to shift your mood by a few degrees. We have all felt it. What makes you feel irked? Waiting to get through a construction zone in your car? Opening a carton of eggs to find two of them broken? Washing your car and then driving through a pothole full of mud? Reaching in the fridge to get the last muffin only to discover someone beat you to it? In the daily comings and goings of life, there seems to be no shortage of things to “irk” us.
The word “irk” traces its roots to an Old Norse word “yrkja,” which means “work”. If you were “irked,” it meant that you were tired from work. In the Middle Ages, the term shifted and came to mean “weary”. In time it shifted one more time to its current definition, “to be annoyed or irritated.”
What should we do about the things that irk us? Just accept them as a part of life and keep going? That does seem like a mature response. On the other hand, psychology tells us that feeling “irked” can have benefits. It is a core-value indicator. In other words, what irks you often points to what you care about most or what you value deeply. Based on my experience at Tim Horton’s, it seems like my core values include consistency and follow-through. And I place a high value on good communication. Psychology also tells us that being irked is an “approach” emotion. The physical activation (like a slightly faster heartbeat or tense muscles) gives us the focus and motivation required to fix a broken process or correct a minor injustice, before it morphs into something bigger.
Or maybe, the correct response to being irked is to consider the oyster:
There once was an oyster whose story I’ll tell
Who found that some sand had got into his shell.
Just one little grain, but it gave him such pain.
Now did he berate the working of fate
That brought him to such a deplorable state?
Did he curse the government, call that the sea
Should give him protection?
“No,” he said to himself as he lay on the shelf
“Since I cannot remove it, I’ll try to improve it.”
The years rolled by as the years always do
And he came to his ultimate destiny – stew.
And the grain of sand that bothered him so
Was a beautiful pearl, all richly aglow.
Now this tale has a moral, for isn’t it grand
What an oyster can do with a morsel of sand?
What couldn’t we do if we’d only begin
Improving the things that get under our skin?
Perhaps being irked doesn’t need a reason, a rationale or a response, but rather it is just part of the rainbow of emotions that make us human. Overthinking it might just give us one more reason to feel irked.
But if there is a positive little pearl that I can take away from my experience of being irked at Tim Horton’s is that it gave me a topic for my blog!!
