Another one from Buffalo.Listening to: If you feel at all tired or down today, I dare you to listen to this. A little Latin music goes a long way!
Bliss: A fresh layer of snow to cover up the car-dirtied old snow. The sun is shining...AGAIN! I am at home, writing and reading and writing and petting cats and a rabbit and writing and reading some more.
One of the ways that I have typically justified my anger to my partner and to myself is the "I'm not as bad as them" defense.
I was raised with so much anger and yes, violence -- mostly of the psychological kind -- that I think anything less must equal good. I have broken the cycle, have I not?
I have not.
That is hard to write. I have not broken the cycle. I do not have children to be cruel to, to belittle, to control. I did not pick a partner who matches me in violent tendencies so that we could feed each others' neuroses or psychoses.
That is to say, I have made some better choices in my life, and I do try.
But like Yoda would say, "Do or do not. There is no try."
I have made some better choices. I have worked on my "stuff." But have I really only gotten part way in my journey and suddenly told myself that I am finished?
No more. Time for some radical honesty: I have not broken the cycle and now I must.
Another way that I justify my anger is by asserting that it is "natural." This is a widespread belief in Western culture.
First, the word anger. Anger is not feeling a little upset; it is not feeling mad at an injustice. Anger is a response that takes effort to maintain. You have to build anger and then you have to maintain it.
If you look very closely at any anger and be very honest, you will notice that anger is just a cover, and if you lift the cover, there is always fear and/or sadness. Always.
Anger is destructive. And the only reason I got anything out of my anger this past week is because I stopped being angry. Then I turned around and looked at myself and my behavior. Again, this could only happen because I had stopped.
From a site on active nonviolence:
Our spontaneous reactions to conflict are often violent; eg in traffic when you are cut-off by another driver. This spontaneity makes us think violence is natural. But in fact it is the product of a process in which we have been trained through a variety of scripts conditioned by culture, family and history. They are "well-grooved neural pathways" which we give assent to in times of conflict or crisis. Nonviolence is the process of 'unlearning' these scripts and learning new ones. This includes seeing that we have a choice.
You see, the longer we justify these angers in our own individual lives, the longer we are giving our assent to war and genocide and destruction of all sorts on the global scale.
But where to start in this process? It can seem very overwhelming. At least to me.
As I quoted this past Sunday:
Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on
and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and
it must be an inseparable part of our being.
--Gandhi
and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and
it must be an inseparable part of our being.
--Gandhi
So we must begin by working on our own hearts. We must begin in our own homes, cultivating peace in our daily lives, from minute to minute and hour to hour.
Perhaps you are already on this journey or perhaps you are just beginning or perhaps you have tried before and given up. As I learn this process for myself, I will, of course, share what I find.
How about you? What have you found so far? Where have you looked? What does your heart tell you about truth and peace and love?
14 comments:
Ahhhh...Christine...you are so intelligent and you are learning as we all are. Just when we think we have it all figured out BAM something hits us to remind us that we don't have it all figured out. The first step is knowing. You are such a wonderful person. I learn from you everyday. I look forward to reading your thoughts and quite frankly you are an inspiration and offer links to other places to find that same inspiration. I thank you 1,000 times.
I have experienced anger from all angles. You are right, it comes from hurt, fear...those emotions are thought of as weak. People judge you for these emotions. It is taboo. You don't open up, you don't let them know how you think, feel...suddenly it all comes boiling out as anger. I recently saw a video someone had posted to a website and it showed the tolerance we have for those who preach peace, love and understanding. We silence them by violence. Ghandi, Martin Luther King, John Lennon...all preaching love, peace, understanding, non-violence. Extinguished.
The people I know who are the most peaceful loving people, Loving of the earth, sky, stars, life...are usually seen by "others" (main steam society for lack of better term) as weird, off, peace mongers, granola, hippies...just to name a few. It takes real cajones to stand up for truth.
Keep standing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDkVQvhZx04
Thanks for posting this wrenchingly honest self-reflection. It rings true to me--and I have reached a similar conclusion.
If I had to quibble, I'd say that anger IS a natural reaction (we see it in our primate cousins, for example), but of course that does not mean that we have to live out of that place of anger.
I prefer to think of anger as a natural signal--as you say, it is a signal of some underlying fear or grief. But it is also a signal to act. I do not mean to act in that impulsive way that anger seems to suggest, but to channel our anger into good works.
Anger can energize us to address injustice, for example. But we must remember not to act until we have galvanized the energy of our anger into compassion and courage.
A thought-provoking post. I'm thinking of my four children and how they each react to situations differently. Who has the most self-esteem? Who's willing to take the most risks? Who rises to anger the easiest? It's all very interesting. But kind of scary too.
Great post.
I agree with Parke. Anger is quite natural. (And I'm not sure it is always connected with violence.) Anger is simply a reaction to have your beliefs or values or wants violated.
It can be selfish and destructive, yes, but not always. I'd say reformation and social justice movements tend to be born of anger that was channeled into a positive direction rather than a negative one.
It's all in what you do with your anger. You can control it or it can control you.
I'm so curious about the "anger in primates" thing.
I wonder...do primates actually get angry or do we humans label their reactions "anger?"
I am thinking, for example, that a primate might defend his territory...but is that anger? Or a natural fight or flight response driven by hormones, etc?
And, yes, we might get angry at injustice, but you are all right -- we CANNOT act out of that place or we are just adding more anger to the mix. We have to get to that place of compassion and then act; I fear too many activists in our day and age come at their tasks with so much anger that they are hurting their causes.
The more I think about this (and I am just beginning here) the more I realize how much anger is fear -- fear of a loss of our individuality and our "territory," because yes, we are animals after all.
Good discussion! :)
That Yoda is a cool dude.
Isn't anger denied much more dangerous than anger transmuted into action? There's a passion in anger which allows one to feel.
I start a four-week course tomorrow called "Standing Steadfast: Models of Non-Violent Peacemaking". No doubt you'll be hearing from me about it!
Oh, Tess, I'll be SO excited to get dispatches from your class. Very cool.
Anger transmuted is very different from anger expressed for expression's sake. There have been a lot of studies that show that people who freely express anger have more heart attacks and overall health problems. The transmutation thing is KEY.
We feel anger. We sit with it. We explore why it's there (looking for those wounds!). We work through it. We transform it; THEN we act. By then, you're acting from compassion and love.
And, I think, a HUGE mindset we have to change is seeing anger as passionate.
Part of this issue is semantics. Anger, to me, is GIANT and RED and UGLY and VIOLENT.
I can get mad, for example, without falling over into anger, where loss of control is a danger.
Jessica, I keep meaning to say -- thanks for the insight about what we do to peaceful people in this world. Truly interesting.
And thank you for reading, Jessica -- 1,000 times over, thank you. :)
I do think anger occurs naturally in humans. That doesn't mean it is good and, in my opinion, it's also not inherently bad. I don't try to prevent anger from arising in myself, but I DO think it's my job to make that anger useful and to learn from it.
I don't find it productive to feed my anger for the sake of being angry. (I know a lot of people who do!) But I do think anger serves as a jolt to shout: Something is wrong here! Look!
Anger is one of those 'secondary emotions,' as you are saying - it arises out of something else.
I might become angry because I'm afraid (or just misinterpret fear as anger). But what is it when I see someone being hurt that doesn't directly threaten me and I become angry on their behalf?
Is this anger that's rising out of compassion? Empathy? Or is it based on fear on the level where I recognize everything that affects anything, affects me?
Interesting thoughts.
Very interesting thoughts, indeed, treehouse! :)
When I got to the sentence about being angry when we see bad being done to others, I instantly thought about how that is threatening to our sense of self, because we think we know things. Does that make sense? Like, we think we know what justice and good and fairness are, so when we see things out of alignment with that, we react.
I also think seeing wrong being done to others can make us react with anger because of wrong done to us in the past. We then become extra sensitive to the "underdog," for example.
AND I agree with your final thought -- that it can also come from a deep understanding of interconnectedness.
"What does your heart tell you about truth and peace and love?"
One this is that all three of these are so connected! I think they all need each other.
Oh Christine...I am on this journey with you. I have issues with anger...I work at it everyday. Somedays are better than others... I am better at catching myself now. I want to control everything and when I can't, the anger ensues. So now, I wait for the rapid heart beat. I am learning to notice the signs and then...breathe. It's hard...so hard! I have children and I don't want my house to be an angry one. Thankfully, it's not. But I have moments. I am human. Unlike Yoda, I try...it's all I can do.
Very interesting post.
My own experience has been one of looking at my chronic depression at long last, and seeing that underneath it is...anger. And, believe me, digging in to that stuff that's been trapped so deep in my consciousness for so long is a release. It's taken me a bit longer to start really looking at the anger, as well. Ultimately, I've come to realize that if I don't want to be angry at myself, and hate myself, I can't be angry and hateful toward others, either. Of course, that's easier said than lived, and that's got to be acknowledged, since otherwise I simply end up angry at myself for not overcoming my anger....
To respond to some of your responses to your readers' responses: I think animals get angry, but it's an immediate kind of thing that goes away once the threat is removed. And anger about injustice is something I've thought about a lot. Basically, I think it can be useful in terms of spurring us to constructive action, though we need to get out of the space of anger somewhat if we're going to decide what "constructive" means. Sitting around stewing with rage about George Bush for eight years, on the other hand, really isn't useful for anything. Writing letters, making phone calls, writing articles, taking part in peaceful demonstrations--these things might be useful. Endlessly spewing vitriol about the government over beers...that really does just increase the amount of ugliness in the world.
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