Anger: Is it worth it?

[krystalgamer]

Yeah, I agree. But sometimes it can go both ways; you can be angry with yourself for not speaking up, or you can be angry at the consequences that have occurred because you spoke up.

Kinda a double edged sword

[HartBender]

"You can build somthing for years and loose it all in a moment of anger" the last words i ever said to my ex... Some confuse anger with passion, when in reality the two couldnt b more different

[shifu-yantao]

in some point i understand this quoting from buddha

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned."

buddha have influeced me in so many ways.

[Qiang]

I feel that sometimes anger does help though. I mean most of the time I'm pretty ridiculous while angry in the sense of getting me to that point probably required a great deal of ignorance or simplicity. I guess this raises a new question. Do you think Anger and Hate are directly attached?

[krystalgamer]

Hate's a very strong thing. I think anger comes and goes without making you hate, and for that reason hate isn't always attached to anger. But I DO think that anger is always attached to hate. Does that make sense? You can have anger without hate, but no hate without anger.

Like, I get angry with my friends over stupid stuff. But I don't hate them, and they don't hate me.

I think the road to anger and hate really starts with either being naive, judging something the wrong way, or a misconception.

[Qiang]

Very true krystalgamer. It's just that things can go overboard sometimes with how some people will be so redonculous (not a typo) about things your like wth?

[Mindbender]

In my opinion, anger is about unmet expectations. I had this conversation with my sister a few months back, because her lifelong anger at our father had recently resurfaced. I told her that she had unrealistic expectations of our father. Not unreasonable, but unrealistic. I told her she had to adjust her expectations to line up with the reality, not get upset when reality didn't line up with her expectations. I told her she had to apply the principles she uses in science (she's a Chemistry PhD student) and apply them to her emotions. When Galileo went to the top of the leaning tower of Pisa and dropped his one pound weight and a his ten pound weight, if he had expected the ten pound weight to fall faster*, would it have made sense for him to be upset with the weights? Of course not. The rational thing to do is the change your expectations. So rather than be upset with her father, she should reassess her expectations.

This thought process has helped me understand and adjust my own expectations quite a bit. I've always been rather stoic, but even more so in recent years.

* Of course, Galileo did NOT expect the ten pound weight to fall faster, he expected them to fall at the same rate, which his experiment confirmed.

[Qiang]

I love the level of thought this conversation is evoking. I applaud your post MindBender, truly insightful and I liked the way you helped your sister apply something she is used to so that she could understand her anger better and get over it.

[shifu-yantao]

if i was a shaolin monk and i had to calm a person down i would tell the person to do qigong with me and i'll say "keep your back straight, relax every each of your body , breath in and out, feel the wind blow pass you become one with nature. take the energy of the heavens above you reach down to the earth beneath you...clear your mind body and soul remember who you are and become one with yourself." once he/she have master this they will see the true meaning of life and understand one another as people.


i even told my mother this one "what is the sun doing?...the sun is doing its job to let us survive on earth by giving us light/warmness but if the sun were able to become angry and not do its job than we humans would die in coldness because there is no sun to make us warm. anger is a short word for danger which lead to distruction and becomes chao's. mastering your anger makes you strong, mastering yourself makes you fearless"

[krystalgamer]

Mindbender, that's an epic way to help your sister!! I love that you related it to something she liked. I never thought of anger as being stemmed from unrealistic expectations, but I totally see it now that you've explained. And Shifu, that's a really poetic way to describe getting over anger. It sounds really wise!

Mastering anger and mastering yourself though...if it was easy, we'd live in a lot nicer of a world. How do you master such a destructive emotion? It's pretty easily evoked, too. And becoming okay with yourself and how you look and how you act, it's even more difficult. I usually tend to find that the person I'm most often angry with is myself, rather than other people. And truthfully, I can't change whatever expectations of myself I have, no matter how hard I try.

Of course, I do like to think occasionally that really, it's the REST of the world whose wrong, and not me

So I guess I'm asking how you master anger and yourself, and how you change your own expectations. Does it come with finding yourself, and looking deep within yourself?