The Upside of Anger

A monk once said that unforgiveness is like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.

How does one find a healthy balance between forgiveness and anger? Must we choose between the two, or can the two co-exist?

Lately I've been hit with a dose of righteous anger - the kind that envelops you when an injustice has been done. It has me by the throat, and this Mennonite gal raised by the motto "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all" forgets her heritage and turns into Kali.

Shamash is bringing out her inner bitch.

They say that the opposite of love isn't hate, but apathy. Perhaps a bit of anger now and again is better than not caring at all.

These lines from the movie  The Upside of Anger (2005 starring Joan Allen and Kevin Costner) deal with the subject of love and anger:

People don’t know how to love. They bite rather than kiss and they slap rather than stroke. Maybe it’s because they realize how easy it is for love to go bad, to become suddenly impossible, unworkable, an exercise in futility. So they avoid it and seek solace in angst and fear and aggression which are always there and readily available. Or maybe sometimes they just don’t have all the facts...

Anger and resentment can stop you in your tracks...It needs nothing to burn but the air and the life that it swallows and smothers.

It’s real, though, the fury….it can change you, turn you, mold you and shape you into someone you’re not.
The only upside to anger, then, is the person you become: hopefully someone that wakes up one day and realizes they’re not afraid of its journey - someone who knows that the truth is, at best, a partially told story - that anger, like growth, comes in spurts and fits and in its wake leaves a new chance at acceptance and the promise of calm. - Mike Binder

So, I toast to a chance at acceptance, the promise of calm.

Until then, I'll focus on being true to myself and honoring authenticity by "bringing out my inner bitch" while choosing not to use my red, Kali tongue to taste that bitter fruit of unforgiveness, the poison of resentment.

Comments

[Darth Vader]

I hear ya chica!!! My school here just gave me a $4000 pay cut this year b/c they say that they can't afford to pay me my benefits. I'm all about the anger right now.

[shamash]

Darth Vader: oh, that's a tough one. How can a school do that at the end of the year? Isn't that breaking contract? I'm sure your experience in Lima will be much, much better. Hang in there, and see you soon in Plymouth! :-)

[Lamamamajama]

I watched this movie with Diane; we thought it was going to be funny. Can you imagine thinking your husband left you for another woman, beating yourself up, and living a hellish life to only end up finding him dead in the backyard? How many times do we make a wrong initial assumption? Life is too weird. I'm thinking of having my ex-boyfriend who is schitzophrenic take me to Saturn with him.