As I’ve gotten older, one of the hardest things I’ve come face-to-face with is Anger.
Inside. Outside.
From me. From not me.
I rarely enjoy working out or running. But when I’m angry… working out and running is amazingly… easy. It’s not torture anymore.
Beyond all that it feels… necessary.
And here’s the interesting truth I’ve learned about Anger. It’s not just a feeling or an emotion… It’s energy. Tangible. Electric.
An energy so strong it seeps out of you
And drips everywhere.
And soaks everything
“I see red.”
Fiery. Hot. Passionate. Irrational.
I think one of the most (if not the most) misunderstood of human emotions is Anger.
I know because I rarely understand myself when I’m angry. Or my loved ones when they’re angry.
Is Anger a bad thing then?Is it? In the Christian bible, one of the jarring examples of anger I’ve always wondered about — rarely visited and talked about, unfortunately — was Jesus at the temple: flipping tables, throwing things, rebuking strangers… at a very public place.
It was business as usual for all of them and here’s this guy, supposedly a prophet or a godly man, being irrationally angry. At what? Why?
And this might be at the core of why Anger is so hard to process for a lot of us. What triggers you is often not what triggers me. And if I’m angry at something I feel is very important, your lack of reaction will definitely make me a whole lot angrier.
And that’s what it is, isn’t it?
If nothing else, Anger does one thing very well.It communicates.
It unleashes out of the norm and forces someone to pay attention.
Hopefully.
There’s this quote by MLK that goes, “Riot is the voice of the unheard.”
The world is a very loud place. And in the last year of being out and about, I personally don’t know of a louder place than America. And still, here we are. Anger seeping out. Dripping. Soaking. Unheard voices. Everywhere. Rooted deeply in a history that is often insufficiently visited, recognized, taught, understood.
#TheOtherAmerica#AfricanAmericans#MarginalizedGroups
I’m learning that History is not history because it’s all in the past.
No…
History is history because it doesn’t just go away. It won’t. It can’t.
It’s there… always lurking like a shadow that follows us everywhere we go.
Or a ghost looking for retribution that haunts us every night. … Until we find the courage and honesty to look it straight in the eye and pay our respects.
I have to say that living in America has taught me so much about life and people and the world. This country has given me opportunities and privileges beyond what I knew.
And even in tiny glimpses, I’ve felt a small spark of that very elusive American Dream. And yet it would be wrong of me to not recognize that the privilege I’ve had is not shared by all.
That the “Other America” MLK wrote of in 1967 is completely gone. It’s not. It’s to a different degree, yes, but especially economically, it is still there.
Being here in NYC (less than a month) has made me see this more than ever. #WeAreListening Below is a portion of MLK’s speech, “The Other America.” I will link the full article below — a very much recommended reading:
Full link to this speech: https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm
