Anger

376 As anyone who knows me is well aware, I get confused very easily. So the other afternoon when I was using the drive-up ATM near my favorite grocery store, I somehow managed to make a wrong turn, thereby exiting the parking lot through an entrance lane. Before I could drive off, a woman in a large SUV pulled up in front of me and blocked my exit. She stayed there for a couple of minutes, glaring and saying angry words I couldn’t hear (and probably didn’t want to hear) before shaking her fist at me and then driving on past the entrance. Part of me was tempted to follow her and explain that it was an accident, but I knew that wasn’t a good idea. What I didn’t get was why she didn’t simply let me make the turn out of the parking lot, which would have immediately cleared the way for her to enter. I didn’t understand why it was so important to her to let me know just how wrong I was and how angry she was. Whatever happened to days of just shaking our head and muttering “idiot” when we saw another driver doing something that was stupid, but not dangerous?

And it’s not as if the anger is limited to our driving time. Recently, a post popped up on my Facebook feed in which a mother was complaining about how a boy on her daughter’s school bus was relentlessly teasing her daughter about her new glasses, which had her daughter coming home in tears. Like any mother, I understood how painful it is to see your child’s feelings hurt, but I was still shocked at some of the responses to the post. While most of them, sensibly, advised talking to the bus driver or school principal, several of them took it much further, calling the boy all sorts of nasty names and suggesting various types of revenge. One person even advised that the girl “punch the boy in the face and kick him hard in the crotch.” Seriously? Adults advising one child to physically attack another child?

It seems that almost everywhere I look these days, I see frustration, anger and even outright aggression, and it’s more than a little depressing. Road rage, parents screaming at umpires during Little League games, news accounts of violent protests and riots, etc. have almost become the norm. The internet is full of “keyboard warriors” who happily attack anyone who dares to disagree with them, or who does something that they don’t approve of. “Name and shame” has become a battle cry for those who feel the need to teach others a lesson, mostly for behaving in a way that they feel is not acceptable. Sadly, there seems to be no shame in publicly attacking other people, and the irony of reacting to hatred with even more hatred is lost on far too many of us.

I don’t pretent to know why so many people are so angry. And I don’t pretend that I don’t have angry moments myself. But I do know that anger is rarely the answer to any problem, large or small. And I know that while we may not be able to choose when we become angry, we most certainly can choose whether or not we act on that anger. We can choose to express our anger, without any thought or consideration to the harm that it does, or we can choose to let our anger be the trigger that causes us to address an injustice in the kind of rational manner that might actually bring about change for the better. Controlling our tempers is not a sign of weakness, but rather a sign of maturity and the willingness to work through our problems toward a productive result.

Sometimes, when we are upset, it really is better just to keep it to ourselves. Because the world doesn’t need our anger, as it has more than enough anger already. What the world needs is our patience, our understanding, our courage, and most important of all, our kindness.

Sometimes it feels good to be angry, especially when we let it show. There’s something satisfying about letting our feelings out: having a good rant, shaking our fist at the driver who just cut us off in traffic, writing that snappy put-down in response to someone’s idiotic Facebook post, and even, when we feel the occasion warrants it, letting loose with a string of good old-fashioned curse words. Giving voice to our bottled up frustrations and finally expressing our self-righteous indignation can feel liberating and even empowering. And if we’re not careful, being angry can turn into a habit, and then turn from a habit into an actual lifestyle.

We seem to be living in a time when there is a lot to be angry about, and we are reminded of it daily. The news media is full of stories of all sorts of injustices, and even if we turn off the news, we see plenty of injustice in our day-to-day lives. Too often good manners are replaced with rudeness and discourtesy, and who hasn’t spent far too much time on hold with what some company laughingly refers to as their customer service department? The Presidential campaign is heating up, generating plenty of anger on both sides, and it seems as if just keeping our heads above water in a struggling economy is becoming more difficult by the day. Any way you look at it, there is plenty to stoke our anger.

But the problem is, being angry doesn’t solve anything. It may be a natural response to provocation, and it may even provide a sense of immediate gratification (“Boy, did I tell them!”) but in the long run, it accomplishes nothing. When we yell at someone, all we do is alienate them, making them feel attacked and resentful. Ditto for shaking fists, cursing, “take downs” in someone’s comment section, etc. Ultimately, expressing our anger is more about pleasing ourselves than about solving a problem, and it usually makes things worse.

I think the key is to use our anger as the inspiration and motivation to deal with a problem. Being angry because I was on hold for twenty minutes over an inaccurate phone bill can give me the stamina to stay on the line until I get an actual manager who can help. My anger over neglected and abused animals gives me the strength to keep going back to the local humane society each week, which means I can be a (very small) part of the solution to animal abuse. And my anger over our current, incredibly cruel and divisive political scene gives me the strength to do my best to treat people who believe differently than I do with respect and common courtesy. Because I never want to believe that any group of people deserves to be beaten down.

Of course there will always be times when I lose my temper and say and do things that I shouldn’t. But I don’t want to revel in those times, fooling myself into thinking that just because my anger is justified that it’s actually helpful. I’ve seen far too many people get stuck in that unproductive and unhappy “angry at the world” mode to want to be a part of that. Instead, I want to apologize to whomever I snapped at, and then take some deep breaths, go for a run around the block, call a neutral friend who is kind enough to let me vent, or do whatever it takes to calm myself down. And then I want to look at the situation with fresh eyes and the question, “Is there something I can do to make this better?”