You wouldn't like me when I'm angry...
It took up way too much of my time.
And, at certain points, I admit I lost my temper and wrote disrespectful things.
How to lose your temper
What happened? I mean, I’m the most friendly, even-keeled, rational guy I know … at least, of all the people who are typing on this keyboard right now.
What happened was that I took his critiques of my argument personally, as attacks against me. It’s a little ironic, because at times he did attack me personally; now, when someone says straight out, “You’re an idiot,” it’s easy to dismiss. The poor guy has obviously lost it.
But when he provided good evidence against my position, I said to myself, “You’re an idiot.” And a burning desire flared up in my belly: I wanted to shout back at him some incredibly sophisticated insult to put him in his place. Something like, “Oh yeah? Well you’re an idiot!”
My problem was that I was identifying a weakness in my argument with a weakness in myself. And, rather than acting to correct whatever weakness was there, I tried to blame the weakness on someone else.
Anger: vice? virtue? or passion?
I grew up thinking that anger was always wrong. I’d feel guilty just for feeling mad. Yet there really is such a thing as “righteous indignation”. The question is not so much what I’m feeling, as what I’m doing with those feelings.
Thomas Aquinas defines anger as “the desire to hurt another for the purpose of just vengeance.” (ST I-II q47 a1) By “just vengeance,” he means punishing someone for the harm they have done toward oneself. In other words, anger is the desire to punish a wrongdoer.
So, when I’m getting riled up, I have two questions I need to ask: first, what harm has been done to me? and second, what action would restore justice?
More often than not, I can stop at the first question. I could be imagining that the person is insulting me or means me harm. Or maybe the harm is completely unintentional, or worse, my own fault. The anger doesn’t always go away, but I know that I can’t take it out on someone else.
Calm anger with justice
On the rare occasion that someone really has harmed me unjustly, well, that’s when it’s tough. I feel like I simply want to hurt the other person. We all know that’s almost never the solution. The question is, can the harm be repaired? Can the person who hurt me make restitution? Can what is wrong be made right?
If so, then anger provides the energy and motivation to hold that person accountable – so long as I’m able to keep my anger focused on justice.
But if there’s nothing anyone can do to repair the damage, then the only thing to do is let go. Forgive, if the person apologizes. And accept the simple fact that life isn’t always fair.
Beating up a punching bag may be about as good as it gets. But it’s far far better than taking unjust vengeance. Two wrongs never equal a right.
Rob -
I can so relate to the lost hours of my life on a somewhat pointless Internet discussion. I have done it so many times now that I should have T-shirts printed up: Would you like to get a time wasting discussion? I’m your woman.
On anger: Anger is just energy — what people are afraid is the negative consequences of it’s undisciplined expression. Consequently, the emotion itself gets a bad rap.
And it’s impossible to have justice without anger. It might not even be possible to have real change without it. Mellow happiness, for better or worse, does not move mountains or create social change.