ANGER

ANGER: MOVING ON

Anger is a feeling that everybody experiences at some time or another. The expression of anger, which is an emotional state of mind, varies from one person to the next. Some people cry when they’re angry, others may feel irritated, and some people feel great rage and fury. Anger can lead to one of two results. Anger can either lead to a constructive result or anger can lead to a destructive result. How you manage your anger will lead to those results. We really want to learn to control our anger so that we don’t hurt other people and even ourselves. We all know that life isn’t always pure joy. Many times during our lives we’re going to experience moments that will make us angry we just have to make sure not to lose control. Anger is not the solution when life does not go as you have planned. It will not solve your problems and will possibly destroy your life and hinder you from reaching your personal goals. Do not waste time thinking about the past and blaming yourself and others, it is much better to move onto something much more productive. Expressing your emotions is healthy. Even expressing the emotion of anger, but being destructive with your anger will not be a very good solution. Just because expressing anger can be healthy doesn’t mean that you’re open to act with disregard while showing your anger. We do not want to let our emotions get the best of us. We need to take control and focus on tasks that are acceptable, not violent, and productive to our lives. If we can learn to forgive ourselves then better things will come in the future. Being angry with others or ourselves is not going to do any good for anybody. If we show that we are unhappy with ones self it will show to others and they will get a negative impression about you that can only dig the hole deeper. Moving on and learning from our mistakes will help us to advance our lives. Do not just brush off your mistakes though that is not what we are trying to teach you, you need to make an effort to not make the same mistake twice. It is best if you try to avoid activities or situations that tend to easily make you angry. Also I’m sure you have activities that make you happy and tend to calm your anger. Make sure to use those activities when you sense your anger and want to behave in a destructive manner. Anger can be good or bad it is indifferent. What comes from the emotion is what we make of it. Stay in control of your emotions at all times to not let yourself become out of line. Use anger to your advantage once you know how to handle it well. I think it is true to say that, given our thoroughly secular environment, we today have a special difficulty. God, who knows our innermost heart, most intimate thoughts and emotions, knows well how very, very difficult it is for us to live consistently by faith. Temperaments differ widely but even the most sanguine and even-tempered among us suffer negative moods from time to time, and when they are on us our instinct is to “have” them, to “sit in them”, to curl up inside ourselves and, at least for a time, regard ourselves as the most important person in the world. Nothing and no one matters, only unhappy me! Such is our natural instinct. Feeling bad-tempered, frustrated, unhappy, we make others aware of it. We let off our irritation and our disgruntlement, spread gloom in the office, dampen the atmosphere of a parish meeting, a family gathering. It may not occur to us that this is unchristian behaviour, deeply uncharitable and, at bottom, a denial of Jesus. Identifying with these negative feelings is, here and now, a refusal to believe in his love. It is to ignore his passionate longing that we should love one another and so bear witness to the world that God is love. Rather, we are adding to the world’s unhappiness and despair. It is not a small fault to let off our disgruntlements, complaints and personal misery indiscriminately on other people who, for all we know, are already burdened. “Bear one another’s burdens”, do not add to them. We are Christians and such behaviour is a scandal. “See how these Christians love one another.”Where is our witness? Loyal love refuses to be miserable and selfpitying, nursing resentments and little hurts. These things must be seen as temptations to sin and firmly rejected. We feel depressed, sad. We have a choice: stay self-absorbed in the dark, unhappy mood, or, while fully recognising the mood, we can choose not to identify with it, refuse to be self-absorbed. If we pray and live our Christian lives faithfully, feeding on all that God has done for us and offers to us in Jesus, then we can choose to “deny self ”, deny ourselves the “luxury” of self-pity and affirm our blessedness. Each of us has one life to live in this world and this life has eternal consequences, for myself and for all other people. If only we could realise how precious, how loaded with consequences is each hour of this life! How many treasures we let fall, how much gold we tread underfoot, opportunities for growing in love of God, of “storing up treasure in Heaven”, disregarded, thrown away! It is of the deepest concern to our loving Creator that we, so gently favoured, be thoroughly Christian. Gloominess, bad temper and moroseness are totally out of place among us. Though we may not be able to throw off a feeling of sadness, we must assume a quiet, unobtrusive cheerfulness. A feeling of grief, sadness, any painful emotion that cannot be dispelled, is an affliction that, borne unselfishly, can be deeply purifying. Loyal love can smile through tears and the sobbing of a broken heart will be free of bitterness. St Thérèse of Lisieux, intent on garnering every detail of her life as a sacrificial offering “for souls”, declared that she was happy in times of unhappiness as these, too, could be offered to Our Lord. Even when we are quite alone and there is no question of our distressing others, Our Lord would ask us to refuse to dwell on, in any way to identify with, our negative moods. As already remarked, this particular, unspectacular denying of self is of untold value in God’s eyes, enabling him to give himself to us in growing measure. Our inner afflictions become a real sharing in our Saviour’s passion. If only every one of his Christian people paid full attention to this interior asceticism that is at hand day by day, what benefits would accrue for the Church and the world so in need of the presence of holiness! As Christina Rossetti wrote: My faith burns low, my love burns low; Only my heart’s desire cries out in me By the deep thunder of its want and woe, Cries unto Thee. Oh, that thunder echoes loud in the compassionate heart of our almighty, all-loving God and will bring its own answer. We cannot know in this life how that hidden, brave asceticism opens our sad world for God’s love to flow in. ■Ruth Burrows is a member of the Carmelite community at Quidenham, Norfolk, and the author of many books on prayer and spirituality.