Analyzing Anger: How can I stop being angry?....[Part 2 of 2....at least I think it'll be just two]

Another example of anger: me, right now. I’m a bit angry. I’m not sure where the power cord to my computer is. I think I left it at a Port City Java in downtown Wilmington, the one at 300 Front Street across from Java Dog. Except maybe I’ve just misplaced, because I just went by there and they said nobody had turned in a power cord. Nobody would steal it, right?

Unfortunately, I feel more inclined to believe that somebody stole it. Mainly because, as I type this sentence, it’s four days later and yeah, no power cord. And honestly, I’d gotten pretty ticked.

I was angry that I left it there; I was angrier that someone would be so indecent as to take it. Why would they take it? What benefit would it be to them? Are they going to feel good about themselves for that? Do they think, Man, I just saved ninety bucks! Do they not think what it might cost the other guy, the guy who, you know, left it there?  

Fortunately, I’m over it. We actually have an extra power cord, the sole good thing coming from an entirely different ordeal from a few months ago when BestBuy’s insurance police sort of put us in a pickle. Long story short, we had to get a brand-new laptop for Katie; we kept the power cord from her old one, which I’ll now use.

I got pretty angry over all of that, too. Anger the likes of which demanded I return the next day and apologize to a girl who worked there.

Yeah. It was embarrassing.

Anyway, I just wish I didn’t get angry over things that are nothing.

Ironically, I’ve written part of this while on board the Peacemaker, a ship docked in Wilmington as a tourist attraction. I’m here waiting to interview Lee Philips, one of the ship’s three captains. I’m interviewing him for The Lighthouse Project.

Furthering the irony is that Lee’s late because he’s been running around Wilmington trying to find out who towed his car. This is ironic because, while I didn’t know it while I waited for him, a buddy of mine’s truck would get towed later that night as we hung out at our place. I got pretty angry about that, too, but this time, I got angry because the tow truck driver got angry at me for telling him he shouldn’t have towed the truck.

What intrigues me is how I get most angry when other people get angry at me. But lately, I’ve been getting as sad as I have angry. Like, it seriously bums me out.

Why is this recognition of anger in others breaking my heart so much? I mean, it’s really bothering me. Why am I so sensitive?

What can I do with this? What can we do about this?

Maybe I can at least answer that last question or two. Let’s look a bit deeper at what causes us to get angry:

Katie, my beautiful and amazingly smart bride, says we often get angry because of something else. What she means is that the anger on display when someone lashes out at someone is likely the result of some underlying thing that’s for some time been eating away at his/her peace.

In the erosion of peace, anger arises.

Anger, my own and others’, crushes my spirit. I’m so tired of it. Sometimes, anger is good. But what about empty anger? Anger I feel toward Katie and others is pretty empty, 99 percent of the time. Is it always really spurred by something else, by some underlying problem in my subconscious?

At first, I questioned that, in my head, when Katie said that. Of course I did. I’m a jerk. But in questioning, answers are found. And what I found was that – surprise, surprise – she was right. I get most angry is when I feel most vulnerable. And usually, that’s when I know I’m wrong.

Funny, ain’t it, how I fight the hardest to win my point even when I know I’m wrong? What is up with that?

Also, a closing thought: focusing on problems only magnifies them. Thus, I should turn my focus from anger to its solution. What cancels out anger? Peace is anger’s greatest opposite, I think. But it’s happiness, rather, that I think truly cancels anger out. Joy.

If we can laugh, or at least smile, at things that usually make us rage, we have, at least for a moment, broken our anger.