Anger, Management

I grew up in a very loving household overflowing with laughter and energy and encouragement. We also had more than our fair share of yelling, slamming doors, the occasional flying object or punched wall, cars peeling out of driveways, etc. One was not taught to hold back.

I took me awhile to understand that the rest of the world doesn't necessarily operate that way, that sudden dramatic outbursts aren't always taken in stride and shrugged off as necessary venting by people who aren't used to being yelled at, to understand the unintentional harm my anger and aggression could inflict on people I love and respect. I'm still trying to strike the right balance, trying to temper my temper without sublimating my emotions, trying to unlearn what needs to be unlearned and keep what needs to be kept. Trying to find the wisdom, as they say, to know the difference.

I had the good fortune to meet an earnest, intelligent, open and spiritual person today who exudes a kind of even-keeled stillness, a man who has clearly dedicated his life to trying to learn how to live and seems to have found a way to use his work to explore those issues as well. It was an example I needed today; I needed to feel that energy. It made me calm down and breathe and hum a little song under my breath, just sitting in a meeting for a few hours and taking in somebody else's beautiful spirit. It gave me a kind of hope. How great is that? How wonderful that we possess the capacity to be surprised by each other, the capacity to give other people what they need without knowing it, the ability to spread peace and stillness by finding our own peace and stillness? Man may hand on misery to man, like the poet says, but he can hand on a lot of other things too, the things you need to make the misery bearable. I think you just need to find them when they're offered, you have to know when to be quiet so that you can hear them.

So I guess that's the balance I'm looking for. I'll always need the catharthis of a good throat-clearing, chest-stomping outburst now and again--it's part of who I am, it's part of how I process. But I can channel it, I think, if I can slow myself down, if I can do the spiritual work of tuning up my mind and spirit. "Teach us to care and not to care; Teach us to sit still," as TS Eliot wrote, probably trying to get at a very different thing (but that's ok too, I'll hear it how I need to hear it today).