“This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.’’ (Page 67, Big Book)
What is ‘sick’? Not functioning optimally.
Sometimes the resentment is entirely due to my unreasonableness, and the person is functioning perfectly well, thank you very much.
Often, I’m being unrealistic rather than unreasonable: my notion of the ideal might be quite right, but no one is ideal.
‘Person’ is better than man for more than one reason. A juridical person (legal entity) is any organisation with its own identity. Organisations can be ‘sick’ in the sense of functioning non-optimally. I can therefore use the prayer perfectly well with such situations.
Regarding the contrariness of the laws of nature and everything that flows from those, from a purely human perspective, I have to remember the observation of Max Frisch, that there are no natural disasters, only human disasters. I’m being unreasonable and realistic when I expect the material world to be pleasant or fair. It’s not malfunctioning: I am.