How annoying …

Tick -tick.

Tick-tick.

Tick-tick.

That sound used to drive me crazy!

As a kid, a major pet peeve of mine was how my dad would consistently leave on the car’s turn signal after making a turn and drive for miles with the ticking sound of the signal reverberating through the car (well, it seemed like it was to me!).

Thinking back about it, I guess older cars didn’t always automatically turn off a turn signal once a turn was completed. That certainly seemed to be the case when my dad was driving!

Tick-tick.

Tick-tick.

Tick-tick.

I could only take it so long before I would say, “Dad, the turn signal is still on.” He would then turn it off, but if I told him too many times on a drive, he would become angry with me.

But how could he not hear that loud ticking sound of the turn signal? Everyone else in the car heard it. How could he not know how annoying that was?

I later came to understand that my dad suffered a hearing loss when injured while fighting in World War II. He was taken from his home in Arkansas and recruited into the Navy to serve his country in a time of need. As a kid in the back of the big Chrysler station wagon, I wasn’t thinking about the noble service my father, like so many other ordinary men and women, had valiantly given to their country and the world. Instead, I was thinking about how annoying that ticking sound was to me.

I didn’t think for a moment about the horror of war my father had gone through. I didn’t think about what it must be like to suffer a loss of hearing. I just knew I didn’t like the turn signal staying on longer than necessary.

As a grown man, I see a lot of people acting toward others like I acted toward my dad as a kid. I reacted to what annoyed me without consideration of the other person. After all, if I find it annoying, what’s there to consider, right?

Wrong.

But isn’t that all too often how we treat many of those around us? We respond immediately to the annoyances or discomforts we experience from others without giving any thought as to why they may behave the way they do. There could be more to their behavior than is understood on the surface.

Philippians 2:3-4 says this, “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.”

The next time you find yourself annoyed with someone else, take at least a moment to check your own motives and look a little more deeply at the interests of others.

Scotty