"Being angry is different from getting angry. It's real to GET angry but something else to BE angry." ~ Cheri Huber
Sometimes I feel I AM angry -- as in, that is my default -- the way I see the world as wrong, as needing to be corrected, needing to conform to my preferences.
GETTING angry is both more honest and more challenging for me. Getting angry is a true expression of honest anger that is focused and not carrying baggage from other times and places... true anger is more like shining a flashlight and less like torching the place. True anger is a genuine response to a specific hurt or slight. It is cause-and-effect and the expression of that can reduce the heat.
A "there you go again" blaming anger increases the heat and burns more that the other person. It burns the whole relationship.
Anger is an unreliable pal. It comes seemingly out of "nowhere" and demands to be heard. Or it buries itself deep underground and seethes until it cannot be held back. No one welcomes poor anger to the table. When it peeks out from behind some innocuous event, we are embarrassed or ashamed of it. Quickly we shove it into the corner where we hope no-one will notice it. Or, we dress it up in pretty clothes and hope our friends will come to like it.
ANGER
is an ugly thing with no hair
and lots of sharp teeth.
It cracks gum and still
has bad breath.
It is fat and wears sweatpants
that show the crack in its butt.
It wipes muddy feet
on your white carpet life
and is never sorry.
O you can try to hide it from sight,
or pick it up and swing it
at everybody in the room.
And either way you lose.
Alas, the only truce possible
seems to be to turn and face it.
To hear what it has to say,
to allow it to exist inside you.
To come to know it as a friend in disguise,
with some message it really wants you to hear.
~Penny Hackett-Evans
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