Trace the Path of Anger

I don’t lose my temper easily. I’m a rather calm and placid person, a non-anxious presence, easy-going about many things.

sleepy gull standing on stone wall with Mississippi River, bluff top hills, and grey clouds in the background

But last week? I had a day. Whoo-boy.

During my drive, I could feel a fury building inside me. Why?

The worries we carry

We all carry our worries with us, regardless of temperament, everywhere we go.

There are the particular and individual worries: health concerns, work and school issues, family troubles, money worries.

There are the common life issues that affect all of us: environment, politics—local and national, the fragmentation of community life.

These worries can all potentially pile up on top of one another. Like a fresh big wet cow pie waiting for the unalert.

The roads we drive

Naturally, there was a dawdling car in front of me on single-lane curvy road! Of course, there was road construction in the long, drawn-out city I needed to drive through—the double-lane road zipping into a single-lane, creating bottlenecking.

I tried to keep on my big-girl patience pants! But I was not able to stop the rolling of my eyes or the sharp comments about some drivers.

The environment surrounding us

I am bothered by the changes within our cycle of seasons. We’ve had too much disregard for the Earth and its needs.

It doesn’t matter if it’s parks—city or national—or private backyards or public areas along the highways. I am interested and curious about it all.

I know that some of the roads I enjoy driving were cut into hillsides along the river. I know some of the lone-standing bluffs, sacred to Indigenous people, were desecrated and carelessly quarried when Europeans first arrived.

From the past, so many white settlers from Europe saw such an overwhelming abundance that too often translated into greed and dollar signs. Not all white settlers, but many.

What bothers me in particular in these days?

Recently, the trees going uphill from the road have been sawed, leaving tall, splintered stumps. In the ditch are the felled branches. With the droughts we’ve experienced the past couple years…it’s great kindling for a fire!

In southeast Minnesota we have dunes, now Scientific and Natural Areas with fragile or rare ecosystems, places where restorations are happening, yet local city councils work with outside building developers and contractors to bring in more tax money.

When citizens are unaware, we sometimes find out too late about what’s happening in our city that feels detrimental and we’re trying to backpedal against a process already moving forward.

There’s beauty in this Driftless Area of Minnesota (and Wisconsin and Iowa) but it’s a karst topography.

Karst is composed of hollows, caves, sinkholes, blind valleys, cold springs, and disappearing streams. Because of the “blurry” nature of ground water and surface water disappearing and reappearing, the water, our drinking water, is more easily susceptible to pollutants.

What kind of a world will we leave behind for our grandchildren, our future generations? How selfish if I were to just live my life as I please and just pass the buck to the next generation to deal with the fallout. No. I don’t want to be that person.

ANGER’S TRAIL

The trail to my fury that day involved past worries—personal and communal, present-moment traffic, and concern for the future of our larger world.  

Anger is a primary emotion with a range from mild irritation to off-the-chart hostility.

My wrath came from a combination of several other feelings: worries, anxieties, frustrations, and a sense of powerlessness. Anger can also be experienced as a result of embarrassment, hurt, confusion, jealousy, or rejection.

Anger can be good. Anger can tell us when someone has stomped on our values, or someone has greedily subsumed too much and it impacts us and we want it to STOP.

The end goal isn’t to ride ourselves from ever having to feel anger again. It’s to acknowledge the anger and figure out a healthy or helpful way to express the anger.

TO RESOLVE ANGER

Will we use our anger in a positive or a negative way? The choice of behavior is always ours. No one can take that choice away from us.

Resources for coping with anger are listed at the end of this column. There are as many ways to deal with anger in a positive manner as there are individuals.  

For myself, I find a combination of reflection and behavior will move me through anger’s intensity, from a sense of stuckness there to a sense of movement beyond.

Earth: I enjoy a walk or drive along the river, or when I lived in Scotland, along the seashore.

Many times, I am moved to tears by the beauty of waves and land. Currently it’s the Mississippi River, its valleys, its blufftops, its trees, within the cycle of the four seasons.

At this time of year bald eagles sit in trees perched on the hills soaring above the river or, if it’s breezy, they’re catching some thermals and circling. Or I’ll pelicans are doing their oddly asymmetrical dance in the sky—flashing bright, flashing dark—against the clouds.

Community: It’s so helpful to join with other people to try to resolve the bigger issues our societies have—the environment, people displaced by hunger, drug/gang violence, or war, and the racial and/or economic disparities.

People are social creatures and we do better within a variety of relationships. We start with family bonds, but as we grow older, we need more than family.

We can find friendships of varying degrees within our neighborhoods, and within villages or towns or suburbs. Within our capitalist structure, money is our bottom line, so we are always fighting backbreaking battles when we attempt to re-prioritize relationships.  

We build community by getting to know the people immediately around us. In the free, non-profit common spaces where a variety of people gather such as parks, libraries, city halls, places of worship, or volunteering with a group to feed the hungry or fight the invasive buckthorn tree, etc.

We also develop friendships or collegiality through other gatherings—work and schools, coffee places and restaurants, city halls and protests, arts and workshops, etc.

Hands-On Tasks: Physical activity exercises a different part of our brain when we’re stuck creatively and can detach us from intense emotions roiling through us.

Whether it’s finally tackling the cleaning out of that old food cellar that hasn’t been used for too many years or digging in the dirt of our gardens, whether it’s whacking a ball on the pickleball court or going for a run, all can take us away from any paralysis or sense of stuckness.  

PREDISPOSE TOWARD HEALTHY COPING

I’m a pastor. Of course I’m going to recommend having a spiritual habit in place. Then when anger builds up, it doesn’t become destructive to us or others around us.  

Whether it’s yoga, meditation, tai chi, prayer, playing piano, or walking—pick a practice.

Let it become your go-to discipline to practice once a day or several times a week. This will not alleviate ever feeling exasperation or anger again, but it will provide a way to cope.

RESOURCES for ANGER and OTHER FEELINGS

Online there are Wheels of Emotions or Spectrums of Feelings. Here are four resources: