We sense this after a long, frustrating day, cooped up on a ‘freeway’ that became a car-park, all the while knowing we were getting further behind on those things that are important to us.
Anger boils away silently within us, most often as we repress our childlike instinct to curl up and cry. Our worlds don’t expect us to act like children now, and we have a job to prove just how adult and ‘mature’ we really are.
But anger is the foil for fear.
Ignoring Fear – The Indirect Path
Fear presents for all-important reasons, but it’s what we do with fear that counts.
Rather than succumbing to it, we explore it, but that takes courage in itself.
Ignoring our fear seems like a more direct path in life, but it’s a shortcut to nowhere as we visit this halfway house — one in a perilous neighbourhood — when a more direct route to resolution could’ve been taken.
This more direct course is simply being honest and courageously relating with ourselves.
Relating With God Begins By Relating With Self
We’re fooled to not do something with these emotions — and the duping occurs at the level of our honesty.
Fool others maybe, but we will not fool ourselves. This viper called “Anger” will bite back in ways we will regret, and all because we gave it no hearing — we stopped listening to ourselves. Imagine that; we hate it when others ignore us! But we’re the worst culprits.
When we put the relationship we have with ourselves on hold, we suspend agreements for living, and begin to forfeit purpose and meaning to life. This is what happens in situations where what angers us isn’t being heeded.
It would be like being in a courtroom with ourselves as judge, but feeling the rank injustice of cross-examination; what betrayal! This relationship we have with ourselves is even more intimate than the marital relationship we share with an entirely different person. And how little do we invest?
What we’re effectively doing when we ignore ourselves is we’re ignoring what God is saying to us via the interaction of our circumstances with our personalities — both of which God has designed.
Beating Anger Is About Congruence
When all things align, harmony is not only possible, but probable.
But harmony never comes without a fight in the first place. But not conflict for the sake of it. Instead, we’re prepared to fight a good fight if there are critical gains to be won.
Winning the spirit is everything as we contend for peace, and let’s not kid ourselves; every day we’re in a spiritual war.
We cannot beat our anger in the moments of climbing frustration unless we’re honest with ourselves and accept, and validate, our emotions. There is no use resenting emotions; they come built-in.
Accept the emotion, and the reason for its existence; then you have commenced the journey to peace.
© 2011 S. J. Wickham.
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