A petty tyrant is a tormentor. Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction.
~Carlos Castaneda – The Fire from Within
In Casteneda’s books, a petty tyrant is ultimately seen as a gift, because they can teach us patience, discipline and to not take things personally.
A petty tyrant doesn’t always know they’re a petty tyrant – and usually we face them at school, in the office, or somewhere we can’t easily escape. When we can’t walk away, we notice how they seem to perpetually push the same buttons of annoyance.
The difference today is that all of us have a microphone, including our petty tyrants. The people who don’t believe what we believe. The people who seem to just push our buttons without rhyme or reason, over and over.
One form of petty tyrants can be the hypesters. If you’re working on a project, or a longer term business, hype can be a shiny object the tyrant will repeatedly use to take you off track. Hype is never an obvious tyrant – there’s less upfront annoyance, but certainly more distraction.
The annoyance comes through only once you realise how distracted you’ve become.
Ultimately, the petty tyrants you have on the news, on social media or in real life who seem to push buttons of hype, fear and annoyance, are still just that: petty tyrants.
They become a gift once we see them as such, as they can teach us the discipline to focus on the work we care about.
We can either grow in awareness with the help of petty tyrants, or else we’re forced to join them and become a petty tyrant as well.
