So much has been said about anger and anger management that the topic and even the word in itself have attained a high degree of banality. But just like some of the other clichéd, yet unresolved topics, like love, friendship, world peace, freedom, pollution (or absence of it), it continues to find its way in self-help books, newspaper quotes, and day-to-day advices by friends and family members.
I’ll start off with some of my favourite quotes on anger –
*Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way... that is not easy. -- Aristotle.
*Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. -- Ambrose Bierce.
*Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved. -- Marcus Antonius.
*There was never an angry man that thought his anger unjust. -- St. Francis De Sales.
*If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size? --Sydney J. Harris
*Anger is one letter short of danger. -- Eleanor Roosevelt
*Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. -- Malachy McCourt
After reading these copied-n-pasted quotes most of us must be thinking the same – “we know it dude. We’ve known it forever. Gosh! You ‘Alec Smart’ Piyush, everyone understands this”.
Infact, I’d not be surprised if quite a few of you are already angry reading them and cursing me for wasting their few seconds of time, which could have been utilized watching some more of IPL. So the important question that rises now is if all of us understand this, then why do we still get angry and more often then not, resent it afterwards???
I’m sharing some excerpts of my analysis on this and will be really encouraged to share more if somebody pose a few questions on it, objects it, ridicules it (supporters not required please :P ).
“A man gets angry primarily for one reason and that is LOSS OF (or fear of losing) DIGNITY / SELF RESPECT / EGO”…
Consider the few possible cases when one can get angry –
*A personal discussion or in a group or even a gossip – See for yourself, you get angry whenever a person doesn’t listen to your argument, contradicts it, ridicules you, etc. And then you respond back retorting back or vowing to avenge at a later date.
*Getting to know about third party suffering (e.g. rang de basanti style) – Its nothing but loss of human dignity and then seeing the adrenaline rising to do something about it. Plain and simple. Isn’t it?
*Material loss (can be as simple as breaking a cup) – Will like to bring here a quote adaptation from the movie The Edge. It goes something like –
Most people who die in the woods die of shame. Yeah, see, they die of shame. "What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?" And so they sit there and they... die, because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives.
Similarly, when you see yourself or someone else breaking the cup you get angry for not doing anything. It has nothing to do with losing some material value. Its just the value of the shame, which might be proportional to emotional or material value of the object.
Wait a minute here! I am getting another term for anger here –AGGRESSION. Let me clarify here that they are not same and one can’t really be derived from another.
To bring out the difference and eventually to define anger please allow me to take some examples from my own real life situations –
*I fought with a chemist and threw a few unbreakable articles from his shop on the floor demanding to be served better …
*I walked on a traffic police constable for stopping me to check papers while I was getting late and offered him to keep my bike safe with him …
*I threw some food bowls in a restaurant coz the service was pathetic and demeaning …
*I pounded my hands on a wall and punched it multiple times as certain people were not willing to listen to me …
I’ll qualify the first two actions of mine as aggression and the later two as anger.
Reason?
When I showed aggression at chemist shop, I showed that I am getting irritated and I am correct while making sure that I am losing money by destroying anything in his shop. My aggression pulled the guy on the back-foot and he served me well afterwards.
Similarly, showing aggression to the policeman helped me prove urgency and the fact that I’ll take my bike back from him after producing proper documents at a later stage anyway.
But when I threw food bowls I had to pay for the bowl as well as food I wasted. I should have rather consulted the manager and could have even walked off from the place. But I was the one losing something in the situation.
Similarly, punching a wall hurts yaar. Whether anyone listens to me or not I shouldn’t hurt myself.
Now the way I’ve put forward the situations above brings out a few things about anger.
First, anger is always WRONG. Aggression might or might not be beneficial, but anger always hurts you.
Secondly, whenever you get angry you lose your ability to do a causal analysis of the situation, while you have some control over senses during aggression.
So whenever I am talking of anger henceforth, it’ll refer to a situation when you are seemingly losing control your brain and act in a way that’ll harm you, and I’m calling that state of mind injurious.
Now, we know that we get angry when we fear losing our dignity while momentarily losing track of our actions and repercussions, which usually result in some form of loss for us.
This brings me to final part of the piece on anger, controlling or avoiding it.
While writing this, I am assuming that you are not biologically or genetically incapable of exercising control over your brain to suppress anger. So if you are a cuckoo then skip the next section J
Here are a few tried and tested techniques that have prevented me from losing control of my mind –
*If possible, look at yourself in mirror while you are getting angry. You’ll realize however ugly you are :-), you still can look worse. You’ll find the image (one or more) shocking, scary, pitiful, and in a few cases funny, and that might help you get hold of yourself coz that’s how people will perceive you as well
*Close your eyes and breathe deep, trying to slow down your beat rate– hackneyed but helpful
*Better to walk out of the situation (physical area like the room), atleast temporarily, only to return after having some solution in mind
*If you can think for an iota of time, just verify if the other person is guilty and the situation will be helped by your anger – converting anger into aggression if required
One most important thing that you can do in the long run, and which I haven’t been successful at so far is to try achieving something great so that you can just smile back on any offender coz you know very well that he or she is nothing compared to you. Sort of – bachcha hai yaar :)
Finally, anger is addictive. Sooner than you’ll realize, you will start enjoying it.
If you are already in that state, then I am sorry that I’ve wasted your time. Else, conserve your energy for your own betterment rather than wasting it, and more, on momentarily satisfying your ego and resenting the action in the long run.
