The mind is screaming. Thrashing, punching, unable to think. Caught in a vortex of uncontrollable rage. Nothing or nobody is safe, as you no longer are in control of the inner demon. This is when you are at your most vulnerable and dangerous. It is at these critical fight or flight moments, where decisions and acts occur that can never be taken back.
Anger is an emotion characterized by strong emotions toward someone or something or someone you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Anger can stem from intense emotions like fear, frustration, or pain. But it can also result from stress, unresolved grief, childhood trauma, feelings of helplessness. Often depression is anger directed inward.
Throughout a large part of my life, I was a walking talking contradiction. Sensitive to a fault, empathic and would do anything for anyone, I was and remain the quintessential ‘nice guy,’ But there was also another side. When this side emerged, it scared me and scared those on the receiving end. Initially, my modus operandi was to freeze in shame and embarrassment. Later I would spend days internalizing incidents turning them over-and-over in my mind, imagining what I should have said or done. As I became an adult, my tool for dealing with anger was to no longer remain frozen in fear but to strike out, often without thinking or considering the consequences of my actions. The anger was out of proportion to the specific act, leaving people confused.
Outside of our individual domains, you do not have to look hard to see the world is an angry place. We all watch people fighting on planes, shooting each other over fender benders, ending public gatherings with blood on the sidewalks. War is breaking out across the globe as the planet is shaded with a palette of red-hot anger.
At the root of all anger is injustice and marginalization. People are concluding that the deck is rigged, and the fix is in. As we try to come to grips with an unfair world where the few are putting their fingers on the scale, many have come to realize that flat screen televisions, brand new cars, fancy clothes, and vacations can never fill the empty hole that resides in so many of us.
Under the right circumstances, anger can be a positive emotion. Anger can be a great motivator, used as a tool to help vaunt oneself to their true potential or as an engine to accomplish things not believed to be possible. We all have at one time, or another, used anger as a positive tool.
However, what we are facing today is systemic and encompassing anger. We are inundated daily with images of angry people, angry events both nearby and afar.
Fortunately, it takes an awful lot these days for me to lose it and the few-and-far-between times that it happens, I have learned to control my anger. This has been the result of hard work and self-reflection. Of course, there are tools that are helpful in controlling your anger such as counting to ten before speaking or taking a deep breath and asking yourself whether the action directed at you has much more to do with issues that the protagonist is dealing with than the recipient?
But more than any single factor, I became a different person when I learned to practice gratitude and forgiveness. I have forgiven the few people who did real damage to me and if this sounds easy and obvious it is neither. I take rides through the Hudson Valley, the Adirondacks, and the Berkshires with my large cup of coffee and my Apple playlist and I give thanks for all the good things in my life. I do not bemoan the bare and barren trees but celebrate their naked and unbridled beauty.
With the world on fire, there is still room for gratitude and thanksgiving for so much.
