Perfecting Patience II

 Continuing in Santideva's chapter "Perfecting Patience" from Way of the Bodhisattva, I read the following line:

Finding its fuel in discontent originating from an undesired event and from an impediment to desired events, anger becomes inflamed and destroys me. (Line 7, p.62)

Santideva seems to get to an interesting point here, which is that our anger and suffering is mostly related to some undesired event. But the flipside of this 'undesired' event is 'an impediment to desired events'. It's interesting, because in a sense Santideva is suggesting that there isn't an undesired event without some underlying desired event. If, for instance, I am in a long lineup waiting to pay for groceries, I might think that the long lineup itself is giving me suffering. That is, it's the 'undesired event'. But in actuality, what is the true source of discontent?
    Put it this way: what if I am lining up at the supermarket, and then realize that outside the supermarket is one of my worst enemies from the past waiting to do me in? Would I then think the lineup itself is bad? Or another, less extreme example: what if raking the leaves is preventing me from going indoors and having to clean a very dirty toilet? Is raking the leaves so unpleasant when viewed in light of cleaning the toilet? I guess that tastes in housework might vary, but the point is that the root of suffering here is the desire for some other experience than what I am having. My sense of suffering in a long lineup doesn't come from the line itself, but is the result of a secret or latent desire to be somewhere else at that particular time. But what if I were to recognize, as Santideva does, that the root of suffering is this 'impediment to desired events'? With this recognition, would I not think twice about desire itself? If desire turns the moment into a nightmare, what would it be like to simply let go of that desire to be somewhere else?
    Again, as in the previous lines of this chapter, Santideva alludes to the way in which anger itself is a kind of enemy. It's not anyone else who causes me harm, but anger itself is the source of the harm. I wonder if perhaps thinking in this way might help a person recognize that their pain comes from needless desires for faraway things. What would it be like turn from desiring that future thing to wanting what is in the moment, right now?

Santideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva (selected chapters only). Translated by V. Wallace and A. Wallace. Snow Lion, 1997.  Other translations by the Padmakara Translation Gorup.