The Authentic Life by Ezra Bayda
Author:Ezra Bayda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
PART THREE
Emotional Awakening
11
The Dilemma of Anger
Here’s an interesting question: why do we continue to do things that are harmful to us? The perfect example is anger. One of my students, who is a psychologist, told me how frustrating it is to work with patients who are habitually angry. Even when they would acknowledge her good suggestions to work with the anger, they nonetheless wouldn’t do what she suggested. It reminds me of a line from a poem by W. H. Auden: “We would rather be ruined than changed.” The fact is, when we express our anger, it doesn’t just go outward—it is also toxic to us; holding on to our anger is like eating bad food. We can all probably recognize this tendency in ourselves—to continue to hold on to our anger internally and express it outwardly—even though we know it undermines our aspiration to live more openly and genuinely.
In part, living from anger is sustained by the illusion that we have endless time. We continue to let anger get the best of us because we don’t yet truly realize that our life is precious and limited. Instead, we blindly indulge our entitled belief that life owes us something. Even when we see how our angry emotional reactions separate us and keep us closed, we hold on to this restricting emotion with a puzzling tenacity.
What is anger really about? When life doesn’t give us what we want, we usually react. For example, when we have an expectation or a strong desire, we will feel dissatisfaction if our expectation or desire is not fulfilled. We cling to the entitled belief that life should go the way we want it to go. And when life doesn’t go that way, anger says, “No! I want what I want!” This is not only true in our big explosions of anger. We can be angry in the form of irritability if our computer starts malfunctioning. We can be angry in the form of impatience if we have to wait in line at a store. We can be angry in the form of frustration if our political party suffers a defeat. We can be angry in the form of indignation and self-righteousness if someone criticizes us.
Again the question, Given that we hurt ourselves and others with our anger, why is it so difficult to stop expressing it? In a way the answer is simple: we want to be angry, because the small mind of anger wants nothing more than to be right. There’s a feeling of juiciness and power that accompanies the expression of anger, and this feeling can be quite intoxicating.
Seen from an evolutionary point of view, cultivating our anger makes even more sense. There was a time when our raw instinctual reactions served a real purpose: to help us ward off physical threats in order to survive. The fact that we no longer face the same kinds of danger that we did as cavemen doesn’t seem to matter—our bodies and minds have not yet caught on.
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