ANGER!

Ok so, I was walking to class today, distracted by admiring the posters on the wall regarding the one remaining all-male residence and the push to go co-ed. All of a sudden, I bumped into another student barrelling towards me with a look to kill. Of course I didn't notice her until the moment when we collided, and I responded quickly with "I'm very sorry, are you ok?" She responded with words I do not care to repeat and reminded me to pay closer attention to where I was going. After I realized that I wasn't in a bad dream, I began to think of how many other people she had run into today or how many more she possibly will. And I wondered if anyone else would just shrug it off, or actually fight back and tell her where to go. So this got me thinking. I had to ask myself,what has made her so mad that she had to interpret my motivation for running into her as purposely planned instead of purely accidental? I mean, people run into me sometimes but I don't bite their head off, especially when they apologize. After all, it was partly my fault for not paying attention to my surroundings just as much as it was theirs. So this made me think even further...what is it about anger that is so inviting?

In the words of Meredith Grey, "In life we are taught that there are seven deadly sins. We all know the big ones... gluttony, pride, lust. But the thing you don't hear much about is anger. Maybe it's because we think anger is not that dangerous, that you can control it. My point is, maybe we don't give anger enough credit. Maybe it can be a lot more dangerous than we think. After all when it comes to destructive behaviour, it did make the top seven."

We think we can control it, but it's not a matter of just thinking but actually doing. I always try to keep my anger in check. When faced with a stressful situation, you have a choice. You can choose to get angry and act out, thus usually resulting in embarassment. OR you can take a deep breath, smile and realize hey, it just isn't worth the time or effort.

And anger takes a lot of effort. It has many physiological and biological changes that are not good! The most common include raising your heart rate, raising your blood pressure, and causing certain hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline to rise. It takes a lot of energy and drains you. Plus it just makes you feel crappy overall.
I think it is important to note that "worry" can be considered a type of anger since it causes the same physiological changes.

I don't want to discredit the natural and life necessity of anger. We need anger to survive. It causes us to defend ourselves when we are being attacked. It gives us that famous flight or fight response, which has been essential in our survival as a human race. HOWEVER, it can be taken too far.

I believe it all boils down to a state of mind as well as making choices when faced with an event that could possibily result in anger. Instictively we want to respond aggressively, but obviously this isn't the healtiest response. This is why we have to make a conscious effort to control our anger in a more healthy way. Finding an outlet to release our anger in ways such as exercise, writing (like I'm doing now), or whatever works best for you as an individual. The bottom line is, it isn't ok to take it out on other people! Those people didn't do anything to you, and just because you many not see them ever again doesn't give you a right to try and ruin their day too. What does this accomplish? This kind of thinking is vey externally focused. Why blame others for upsetting you just because there are other events in your life that have put you on edge? Stuff happens, people make mistakes every day. If you believe the world is out to get you then that's exactly how these simple mistakes will be perceived.

If someone does something wrong to me, I give them the opportunity to correct it or at least apologize. This doesn't always happen and I will admit, it does upset me when people do not acknowledge their accountability in events like this. Mainly because I view it as ignorant. But I'm not gonna start cussing them up and down just because they don't "know better" or simply don't care. I just walk away, shrug it off, and go on with my day. Why let people like this control your life??? I just refuse to let it get the better of me. When anger takes control, you lose control. Not to mention, life is too short to be tied up with who said what, who did what, and why they did it to me.

"So what makes anger different from the six other deadly sins? It's pretty simple really, you give into a sin like envy or pride and you only hurt yourself. Try lust or coveting and you'll only hurt yourself and one or two others. But anger, anger is the worst... the mother of all sins... Not only can anger drive you over the edge, when it does you can take an awful lot of people with you." - Meredith Grey