WE MUST OWN OUR ANGER

An old saying is that we cannot truly solve a problem until we own that problem. Viewing our difficulty as something apart from ourselves will reduce our role to being bystanders or victims. To effectively manage issues, we need to be active participants in solving them instead of being observers or complainers.

The act of forgiveness is like dining on excellent food. We will need to engage the food by consuming it. This activity means putting it in our mouth, chewing, swallowing, and digesting it. No one else can do this for us. We must be involved with our challenges in the same manner.

The origins of our anger

Several common misconceptions about anger will interfere with our efforts to forgive. One is the belief that our feeling of anger is somehow not ours. Many assume the anger must come from those who want to harm us since its arrival coincides with the injury done to us or when we think about them.

But this is not the real story. Consider if your new puppy relieves itself all over your living room floor. This event will anger or at least annoy most people. Or suppose we stub our toes rushing to clean up the mess, and then we are angry. Does the chair we struck now hate us and send us waves of anger for hitting it? Does the puppy suddenly dislike us because we have embarrassed it? Does it growl and attack us?

Of course, none of this happens. We react and generate our anger. We create this resentment by our automatic response to something unpleasant and disturbing. Likewise, many other situations can annoy us and stimulate a hostile reaction. Life is full of events that can trigger our irritation, but we still create our emotional responses. The same pattern of cause and effect applies to our fears, sadness, guilt, and feeling of being helpless.

The robot in us

Every day is full of events that can provoke our emotions. Usually, we can point to a circumstance, comment, or even a memory that triggers these reactions. Sometimes this response is cheerful and constructive, but many are on the wavelength of annoyance and disappointment.

No one is forcing us to be happy or upset. We make this choice, either as events occur or long before in previous encounters with a similar stimulus. Most will claim that their responses are always appropriate and justified. Of course, we are angry when bad things occur, just as we are disappointed when we make mistakes or experience a setback.

While we are not robots, we certainly can act like one. When we neglect to notice what we are doing, we become the passive puppet of our automatic emotional reactions. We fail to see how our emotional equipment can act as if it has a life of its own—which it often does. We are still making these choices, but our original decisions were usually made in our childhood and may not have been modified much since then. This era was when we decided how to respond to unpleasant circumstances. Somehow, we concluded that insults and offenses always make us angry. Disappointments make us sad. Threats make us anxious. Mistakes will make us feel guilty, and so on.

This scenario describes those who live with their autopilot switched on. They are not actively monitoring their thoughts or emotions. When questioned, these individuals insist that their mature purpose and commitments guide their significant decisions and behavior, but is this assumption usually valid? Aren’t there some annoyances we should manage with understanding and mercy instead of resentment? Could we often cope better using grace and patience instead of despair?

Who is in charge?

We have far more control over our emotional reactions than we might believe. We only need to pay close attention to what we are thinking and doing. Yes, of course, we can be overwhelmed in extreme situations, but we can turn off our emotional autopilot if we sincerely want to.

We also do not have to follow our old programming, nor do we need to “go with the flow” of our usual feelings. We must remember that no law commands us to be angry about every insult or fear every potential threat. We have the power to decide what will be a suitable response.

It can be very tempting to continue our grievances about old injuries. We can continue telling ourselves we are justified in keeping our anger as long as we have our complaints. We hurt and are not going to pretend we don’t. Unfortunately, our anger will also preserve our suffering and inhibit our growth.

The good news is that we can cancel some of our old resentments. For instance, we may decide that some annoyances are too petty to preserve. Other times we can develop new perspectives and understanding that erase old judgments. It is incredible how enjoyable life can be without most of our old grievances.

Who is to pay for our suffering?

One of the great misunderstandings about forgiveness is the assumption that we must receive confessions of guilt and apologies from our enemies before forgiving them. We may be justified in accusing certain nasty people and awful situations of causing our distress. However, if we only stand back and complain, we will contribute nothing to our recovery. Waiting for others to repair our wounds and make us whole is usually not a good choice. These expectations are more likely to lock us into permanent frustration than help us find relief.

The astonishing truth is our participation in the process of forgiveness is essential. Some will obtain help from individuals, a charitable group, or the government, but we will still need to play a role in the final stages of forgiveness. Only we can attend to the wounds in our belief system and ego. Unless we do this, a large part of our resentment will remain.