It's The Anger That Kills Us

It’s The Anger That Kills Us

John Paul Derryberry

To this recovered angry individual, the lengths we go to dampen the power of other emotions remain a conundrum. We culturally give a lot of energy to the feeling of anger. Yet very few ever expound philosophically about how happiness can be a motivating factor in making our world a better place. It's always using your pain, sadness, and anger to drive you. One particular quote, "The hope that kills you," always confuses me that it is a part of the lexicon. It is like actively wanting things to improve, will kill. We fail to realize that by allowing so much anger and sadness to run life, we are actively killing ourselves.

I know I have written about this before, but it's a constant I continue to see in our culture; anger is the emotion that should lead us. It's not; it's dangerous. I vividly remember the damage I could cause with my anger and the intoxicating feelings of the rush when I wielded it. I get the appeal. It makes the welder of that angry backlash feel unique and powerful. The destruction of lives in its wake is long. The amount of hurt, confusion, and doubt of those in its orbit is too large to be considered an effective tool to accomplish much.

It takes so many subtle forms, from manipulating your words against you, to not listening to anyone else's input, to expecting people to go outside their agreed-upon work requirements to make it look good. It's all under the guise of anger, and the person wielding it does not have the depth of character to ever publicly fail or have the ability to use other healthier emotions to motivate folks. It's nasty; the rubble left behind in a place where anger was allowed to take root.

The more I remove myself and evolve away from anger as a driving force, the more I see how joy, happiness, and curiosity can create magic in our lives. Something only anger cannot do. Not that I don't have moments of feeling mad; we all do. But it's like playing with a lit firework to use anger as the primary motivating factor in life. You have to constantly look for battles to fight, things that cause anger to come outward from you. Lookingk for all the bad in the world can leave you with an anger-slanted view of the world.  

All of that sounds exhausting in my mind. My anger almost killed me, and it's killing lots of other folks in numerous ways. I don't want my life work to be that of anger and leaving a wave of destruction in my wake.  My guess is neither did those leading with anger now. But along the way, they weren't shown the destruction anger causes and the hope joy brings. I don't think it's the hope that kills us because where I have led with hope, the best things in my life have occurred for me and others. That's a life I can believe in and the life I can gift to others.