On Anger

On Anger

I used to get angry a lot.  I used to tangle with that monster at least once a day. As I grew older and saw the negative ramifications of my anger I decided to do something about it.

In order to do that I had to understand what anger was and why it owned me.  The answer was easy, I was afraid almost all of the time. Partly born to it, I have always been predisposed to panic. “Even as a baby” mom says.  My unexamined vision of the world is one that is arbitrary and incendiary. I thought it picked people out at random and burned them up alive.  There was no mere problem that I couldn’t turn into a catastrophe.

 Knowing that I am who I am in the nervousness department I decided to work on my anger as a project unto itself. I wanted to be able to feel fear and not become angry.

Here’s the thing about anger. It is an able imposter. It feels like the answer when in fact it isn’t at all.  That’s not to say you don’t ever have the right to get angry.  The thing is you have to be in charge of when it appear,s to whom it is directed and whether or not it will serve you well in the moment. Most people just feel it and act upon it because if feels like the right thing to do at the time because

 ANGER is easy. That’s why any two year-old can do it.

2.      ANGER IS deceptive. It feels like power when it’s really just fear or frustration looking for a place to land.

        ANGER  is cathartic. It feels go at the moment you express which leaves you to believe it is a good thing.

The most important thing to my assessment was, however, anger leaves you more vulnerable to the world at large.  You are not more logical when you are angry. You don’t think as well, if you manage to think at all. Anger, though frightening, is not persuasive.  And once you start getting angry all of the time you get tagged as a lunatic so even when you ARE making sense people are less likely to believe you.

Anger makes you hit people, throw things, shoot folks. Let’s say a guy insults you in a very public manner. You beat the living daylights out of him. Now you go to jail. That means with a few simple words, someone you don’t like took away a year of your life.

Anger is like a city broken into and left without walls.  That’s from the Bible. I think that about sums it up.

 So let’s say you are in a place where anger rules what you do.  I continue to work on everything, my propensity toward anger included. I hardly ever get angry anymore but that’s because I’m always on the look out for random emotional foolishness that might get in my way.

 Emotional Awareness has not only taken care of the inappropriate anger but it has laid into my fear as well.  I work on it daily. I’ll share that with you here. Maybe it will help you too with whatever emotional stuff you have …

This is my ongoing effort to make sure that I am running my own emotional house and it is not running me.

 You guys have a great day!

JLT