22 April 2009

On anger

Recently, I wrote a post about my frustration with someone I work with.

Ironically, THIS came up on my "Quote of the Day" calendar this morning ...

"Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,

it is better that you should sit at the gate of the temple
and take alms of those who work with joy."

~ Kahlil Gibran

Looks like this reminder came just in time, eh? The universe is funny like that. :)

But it really did make me think. I do take joy in my work the majority of the time. Overall, it is something I enjoy and would miss were it gone. But, yes, there are moments of frustration and even anger.

Usually, when I get to feeling frustrated, I talk it out with my lunch-buddy - one of my best friends. She and I go to lunch and we bitch a little and then we laugh about it and we move on. We joke that we should be able to write off our weekly lunches as occupational therapy. It really is cathartic.

This time, I tried writing about it.

To be honest, I really hesitated to put the anger and frustration I was feeling into so permanent a form. On the one hand, I thought it could be good for me to "get it out". On the other hand, it makes it ... permanent. It gives it life outside my own mind.

I did feel better after I wrote it. I'd satisfied the need to vent a little and I felt like some of the negativity was purged from system. I was ready to let it go.

It's gone.

But, also, it's not.

Because it's still here - in black and white.

The feelings are gone, but the words remain. A reminder of that negativity. A reminder that words said in anger can never really be "taken back".

I think this is the first time I've ever posted anything so negative - the first time I've vented anger and frustration in writing. And now it's part of the permanent record.

I can own that. And learn from it.

As I've said before, "zen" isn't about feeling calm all the time. Anger is a part of who we are, too. To deny it, to sublimate it, is unhealthy. It's "okay" to feel anger. The problems happen when we act on that anger. Or when we hold on to it.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal
with the intent of throwing it at someone else;
you are the one who gets burned.
~ Siddhartha Gautama

The best thing is to accept that you feel the anger in this moment and then let it go.

If you are holding on to anger from the last moment, then you are not fully invested in this moment.

So ... does writing about anger help you move from that moment to the next? Does it help you learn and grow? Or does it prolong the feelings, distract from the now? Does scratching that immediate itch give you relief ... or does it only serve to leave more lasting marks?

I don't know.

But, for me , I think my "therapy lunches" with my girlfriend work better.

###

Once upon a time there was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he should hammer a nail in the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. But gradually, the number of daily nails dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the first day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He proudly told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.

"You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won't matter how many times you say 'I'm sorry', the wound is still there."

5 comments:

  1. I've always really liked the nail story.

    I am very aware that my blog is out there in the world. I will not post negative things about my husband, my son or the inlaws (no matter how much I want to vent about the MIL). I try to remember that some day my son might read my blog and I don't ever want to hurt him.

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  2. Wow...powerful post! I can relate too... We carry the "zen" with us and sometimes we stray...but it is always there. After all, we are human! I think if I had to pound nails in a fence, there would be about 312 nails on the first day...lol (I tend to anger easily). I have gotten better...but let's just say I am not passive aggressive. The good thing is, I get over anger easily and do apologize. But the hole remains. Hmmmm...lot's to ponder here!

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  3. Yeah, the nail story is a piece of crap that makes me angry.

    Writing your blogthoughts is wonderfully beneficial. It's why most therapists ask folks to keep journals.

    You write your most painful stuff down. You write your angriest stuff down.

    Then you go back and re-read the stuff you wrote until the time when you read it and the feelings while reading them are gone.

    It's called 'elimination.' Next thing you know, you feel sososo better about that incident, and it's truly 'gone,' in the past forever.

    As for the nail story, you forgot the last sentence:

    "The son then turns to his father and says "Motherfucker, YOU were the one who told me to fuck up the fence!!!! Nail THAT, asshole."

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  4. There is a difference, Stephen, between 1) journaling about negative emotions and 2) taking them out on someone else.

    I don't think I said or meant to imply that journaling about anger or sadness or pain was a *bad* thing. I'm just not sure it's *my* thing. At least not in this instance.

    Of course, this wasn't a huge deal ... this was just a little frustration at work. A passing annoyance. If I had bigger issues I was dealing with, I might find journaling about them to be helpful.

    But, in this instance, for me, dwelling on the passing annoyance made it bigger than it needed to be.

    As for the nail story: I think we've all said or done something in the heat of anger that we later regretted.

    You of all people should know that you can't *really* take those back. You have enough scars of your own to know that.

    Speaking as someone who was once the fence to your nail ...
    if the option is to scratch your rage onto the page or to direct it at an innocent person ... then I agree that journaling is an infinitely healthier solution for everyone involved.

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  5. Hi, I just happened upon you from a comment on The Zen in You, but realized I know you from Religious RoundTable on Cafemom! Small world and all that...

    I related to your post on two levels - the honest struggle with anger (which has always been my bane), and the complications with writing about it...our awareness is so transient, but print is not...I was recently reading that Sue Monk Kidd cringes every time someone brings up her early and defining bestseller The Dissident Daughter, because now it represents such a long ago phase of her spiritual journey, and seems almost infantile to her...I read something similar about Thomas Merton and The Seven Storey Mountain...just a price of writing I guess...

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