Anger

by Cheng-Ling Chen — February 1, 2008

I recently saw an online video clip called "Car Wars in the Parking Lot." A woman, say her name is Brenda, parks her car next to Jane's. Brenda opens her door and hits the side of Jane's car. Jane calls her on it, but instead of apologizing, Brenda makes a snide remark about Jane's car. To retaliate, Jane opens her car door to hit Brenda's car. Their anger escalates, and soon the two women are crashing each other in the parking lot.

The women's fury is mortifying to watch, yet there is hilarity in how caught up they are in it. They want to hurt each other so badly that they are willing to do it at the expense of themselves. Right before the end, the camera zooms in on Brenda's bumper sticker. It says, ironically enough, "War is not the answer."

I think about the times I get angry. Regardless of the circumstance, my anger is usually the result of having taken something personally. I interpret someone's action as a direct malice against me, or I think the universe is out to get me. My interpretation is sometimes accurate, but more often than not, it is a version divorced from reality. The interesting part is that while I may be directing my anger towards someone or something outside of myself, the root of anger stems from something within. Fear perhaps, a reaction from a previous experience, certain biases, my own insecurities....

Pausing in the heat of the moment - before anger gets under our skin and digs into our fingernails, before it heats up our hair roots and burns our ears - is difficult. It is much easier to give into the natural reaction and let the energy of anger propel our next move. After all, with the momentum revved up from the tension and aggression, it feels stagnant, weak, unnatural even, to stop the acceleration of anger. So in our anger we act, often without being fully aware of our actions.

Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, "The dance of one thing inevitably [leads] to another...of consequences impersonally set in motion, the end result of which can (mistakenly) be taken personally and lead to ignorance compounding ignorance, aggression compounding aggression, with no wisdom anywhere."

Perhaps the next time we feel the insidious fingers of anger choking us, instead of wrestling, we take a breath. If we relax, we may find that anger must loosen its hold. That brief moment may be just long enough for us to perceive things differently and react in a way that leads to wisdom rather than ignorant aggression.