We have so many programmes and workshops in the corporate world all over the place for anger management or stress management. People feel angry about so many issues and their work issues affect their home life or sometimes its the other way round! 😉 (“work is a place to get away from stressful home life” said some signature 😉 ) Some people go to some kind of workshops to a reasonable extent they learn to “manage” their anger, and are very happy about the guru who taught them how to make their anger “go away”. [ But say one word against that guru and one can find out where all that anger has “gone”]
Everyone already knows it, and completely agrees with “don’t be angry its bad for you”. And everyone already knows that anger causes high blood pressure and all kinds of other illnesses. It may be good things to hear and maybe useful to be reminded of the harm of anger, but during the times that I’ve actually been angry, if someone were to remind me of any of that, I’d probably tell them to get lost (to begin with)! 
One of the great sons of India has compared anger to burning charcoal. We are holding it in our hand, wanting to hurl it at someone because that someone “deserves” it! And then we get hurt and we learn about anger management where we learn to count to ten, or repeat someone’s holy name, or try to see things in a more positive way, so that we feel more peaceful and then we can safely dispose the now cooled down coal into a dust bin instead of the other person.
So because of my ignorance I don’t see that I am still getting burnt… so if I don’t express then at most I may try to manage by putting up with it (which may not always work out in the long run).
So the only true long term solution is to examine my ignorance but this is really hard to see – remember the puzzle! 🙂
One of the puzzles Roberto asks:
What is it: The more there is of it, the less you can see it.
The answer…
Darkness
One way to see this would be that the more ignorant one is, the more harder it becomes to acknowledge one’s own ignorance! So for this dark, ignorant part of my mind, irrespective of what anger-management I intellectually have learnt about (when I had not been angry), becomes meaningless and useless when anger actually knocks on the door. Because then, answering with anger becomes the most logical rational pre-programmed thing to do.
The whole purpose of my life is to (re)discover again and again the more beautiful alternative possibility in answering the door.
Leave a Reply