Last night, I came home and wrote an entire post about anger. About how, a few days ago, mind you, a woman in her sixties driving a large car flipped me off for no apparent reason. It made me angry, and enough that I would bring it up several days later as an example of how anger is just going to happen and there’s no way to avoid it.
But then I thought, why? Why the anger? What’s the point?
I wrestled with my feelings about anger for a while. Then, I didn’t post what I’d written deciding to sleep on it. I woke up this morning still unsure of how I feel about anger. My first instinct is to say no to anger. Let it be, let it go. It’s not worth it and it doesn’t create a positive environment around you. And I believe that. I believe you have to let things go, as much as you can.
Interestingly enough, though, I also believe in strong emotion (I know, shocking). I believe that’s what motivates us. Strong love, strong desire and sometimes, strong anger, have birthed some of the greatest movements in this world. When I work with cancer patients and their families one of the constant and most obvious emotions is anger. They are angry at cancer. They are angry at the way it changed their life, they are angry at what it took away. The anger may not be 100% of how they feel, but it plays an unmistakable role in the lives of those affected. Many times, I often hear the anger is what motivated a patient to be relentless in her battle against the disease. I cannot, having witnessed this emotion, say anger is wrong.
A strong emotion like anger is what keeps us from settling. It can happen anywhere, at any time. Josh mentioned in his Civic Duty post that he just couldn’t stand to see someone blatantly littering. It made him angry enough to say something. And I think it should. There is always a chance of someone coming back at you with their own anger, but is that a reason to keep quiet? We are all too consumed with keeping quiet at the risk of danger when, really, the quiet is often contributing to even worse. Like Josh, I once told a guy to stop hitting his dog because it made me angry. It may or may not have been my business, but it rattled enough emotion in me to say something. And maybe, he feels something different before he goes to hit his dog now.
Once, the single and therefore having limited perspective girl I am, got all upset over how some women treat men. The comments on that were mostly on my side if a little mixed but I made the mistake (or had the extreme fortune, maybe) of sharing that post with a friend (yes, sometimes I share this stuff with people I actually know!). I received an email back that basically chastised me up one side and down the other- if that’s even possible- saying how dare I think those things and how should I know, I’m not in that relationship. But I wrote it, and I stuck by it because I felt strongly enough that the behavior is wrong.
I also approached it in a much more constructive way, which I realized after my chastising. Sure, my friend may have ripped me but for what purpose? I seemed to get my point across without insulting or ripping anyone apart. Well, except for the women in denial because yes, I still believe you shouldn’t treat a man like crap and then expect him to kill your spiders. And this, I think, is where the difference lies. It’s never the emotion that’s wrong, it’s how you handle it. Do you channel it into strength and fighting for survival or do you channel it into negativity and hate?
It’s tough, I know. I know when that sixty year old woman flipped me off I was feeling all kinds of negative. There was nothing in me willing to find a way to channel that into something better. But sometimes, there is.
So go on, get mad. Get angry at cancer and carelessness and cruelty. Get all in a tizzy about people and things that aren’t right. Use that anger to get to a place where you can do something about it, even if it’s only to hope for a change. I’m going to. It is what is supposed to happen. Keeping our mouths shut does not mean we are trying to preserve something. It means we are trying to preserve ourselves and that should not always be acceptable. Of course, keep you and yours out of imminent danger but also, make very certain that the cost of stifling the emotion isn’t even higher.
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