I don’t often get angry.
anger is a waste of time, energy and effort. when I was young I spent a lot of time being angry. Inwardly, anyway. I never expressed it much outwardly, so it was bottled up so tightly that it turned back in on Me. That was so pointless and self destructive that I learned to live without anger.
the Buddhist way is free from anger. An angry person may have things going on in his life that are making him angry. When faced with that angry person, I cannot affect the things that make home angry. All I can do is control the way I react to his anger. I like that philosophy and have tried to live by it for a long time.
people have generally called me a laid back, calm sort of person. That’s what I’m known for.
i prefer to be assertive rather than angry. Most situations can be resolved by assertiveness, few can be resolved in anger.
however, there have been a few occasions when I have got very angry and have used aggression to resolve a problem. One was a couple of years ago, when a work colleague, who has always been an angry man, became even worse than usual. He has always been a bully, but there were obviously things going on in his life that made him more aggressive and unpleasant than usual.
things cam to a head for me when this man threatened one of my staff, who was simply trying to do his job. He threatened to beat up one of my team after work for no apparent good reason other than he didn’t like the outcome do an investigation we’d been doing. A very gentle and quiet lad, he looked visibly shaken when he came into my office to tell about the incident. The anger I felt at that moment was so intense it took me by surprise. But there it was and instead of sitting back and thinking things through as i usually would, I stormed off down to the factory to confront the bully.
boy did I confront him. Shouting at each other, noses inches apart, we almost came to blows. I saw his fists clenching, but instead of fear I felt more powerful. If he hit me, he’d be dismissed, so I egged him on. I yelled things in face about him being a psychopath, a complete nutter who got his kicks from bullying not only his own staff, but others too. How he got off on intimidating those weaker than himself. He in turn snarled that I was fucking useless and that I would never beat him. My final response was to bang my fist on the table we were standing beside and scream ” useless, eh? That may be, but beat you I will. Let’s see who fucking wins!”
and with that I turned and stamped off again, noticing for the first time that the factory staff had been watching it all.
What did it achieve? Nothing really, except that someone like him doesn’t respond to normal behaviour and it had the effect of calming him down for a long time afterwards with me anyway.
So I can get angry. A counsellor I had a couple of years ago tried to get me to be angrier. She said I deserved to be angry after the way id been treated by many people over many years. You need to get angry, she said, to get bloody angry. Then you might do something about it all.
But I don’t want to get angry. I will sort it all out in my own way. After all, the people who treated me badly have all got their own things going on. And I can’t affect those, I can only affect my own relation to their behaviour…
What prompted me to write about anger today? Well, for the first time in ages, I got so angry at work this morning that I had to walk out of a meeting. Luckily, I walked out before I displayed the anger, but I threw my calculator against the wall when I got back to my office. My god, was I fecking angry.
Thankfully I finished work soon after, so by Monday I will be able to handle it in a calmer, more assertive, ruby way.
No sketch today, too many other things to do..
Barbara Murray Art 