anger
Can we see each other through our anger and focus more on the person behind the anger rather than the anger itself?
Can we work as a united team, more focused on each other than on the feelings that can blind us and distort our ultimate truest visions and priorities?
Anger is a really unflattering emotion, and it tends to be a very inciting emotion. Because I am not the most patient, level-headed of people — I’m pretty emotional — when I’m faced with anger, when someone is angry with me or behaving angrily towards me… when I’m faced with attitude… it’s really hard for me to respond well.
I’m thinking about how it would be different if my response were to see the person before me and focus on them rather than their anger, because there’s always a person. This is not just the behavior or the injustice or the rudeness. There’s someone underneath all that, carrying their own feelings, hurt, vulnerability, and struggles.
There’s always someone behind the feeling, the behavior, the action, the language, the communication…
So I’m wondering how things might be different if I practice focusing on the someone. On the person. On the humanity. The vulnerable feelings and heart behind what’s being displayed as anger. What’s not showing through the anger, but that is nevertheless there.
Then also, the mirror — the opposite of this — rather than when someone else is angry with me, what about when I am angry with someone else? When I’m feeling anger for whatever reason, what if instead of focusing on how angry I felt, wanting to communicate that anger and make sure it’s understood and experienced, what if I focused on the me and the other person in the scenario? Only on the people behind what’s happening. The relationship. Understanding we are united as a team who wants to focus on each other… even though we’re fucking pissed.
Anger is really unflattering and evocative, but we can rise above it and learn how to see each other through it, and instead of choosing meanness, choose humanity, empathy, and an effort for patient understanding, even in the face of anger. Because anger is just part of being human. We will all feel it sometimes, and in close, intimate relationship, it’s going to come up. We get rubbed the wrong way. We hurt each other’s feelings. People get angry. How are we dealing with our anger?
