Sunday Night With John: I'm Angry!

I’m angry! An exclamation we have all muttered, shouted, or stated emphatically, at others or all by ourselves. When express this emotion, we expect people to come to attention right away and fix whatever is driving our anger. Anger is an odd emotion considering the fact we only become angry when another emotion has been slighted. I bet some of you even clicked on this article to read what I was angry about. We love a good train wreck of emotions, and it seems to be we have grown into a culture were the louder and more profound the anger, the more righteous we are in our anger. Feelings of anger can cause us to loose ourselves in right and wrong and can begin to isolate as our angry outbursts and actions might cause those closest to us to stay away.  Just because you are angry about something, doesn’t mean you are always right. 

If you have been reading my blogs, you know I have been on my own personal journey to understand my own anger.  As I started to look at it was doing me, I started to notice anger affected others when they made it the most important emotion in their lives.  I definitely saw it in coaches’ throughout my high school and college basketball career. If they wanted to make a point to the team, they would do it with anger. I remember my coaches yelling instructions with profanity as if seeing a vein pulsating in their forehead was going to motivate me to not turn the ball over again. One coach who felt our team played uninspired came into the locker room at half time and chucked the eraser and began to scream at us as the vein in his forehead began to grow. Three fourths of the way through his rant his voice cracked and then we cracked up laughing. Then he started laughing and that vein receded back to normal. He then took a big breath and said I’m angry because I know we are a better team than that. As a team we talked about our efforts and eventually won the game in overtime.

I can also remember a moment in college when I said something that struck a nerve with my friend. He grabbed me shoved me into the wall yelling that I had made him angry. My other friends ran over and got between us and quickly corrected his anger. “Just because you’re angry doesn’t give you the right,” one friend stated.  Another friend asked “how the heck was John supposed to know his statement would make you angry?  He didn’t say it with any sort of malice.”  After being confronted, my friend quickly let go of his anger and began to chat with us about why he went to anger so quickly.

Another instance was when I was in my late 20s and having a really good day. I had gone for a morning run at my favorite state park and even kept pace with my faster running partner. I had recently booked a couple of new public speaking gigs and nothing was going to take me down this day. After getting cleaned up from my run I walked into work with a smile on my face and heard a deafening scream down the hallway, “I’m freaking angry!” I approached the client, starred them in the eye and responded with, “I’m freaking happy!” at an ear ringing level and walked right on by. The individual stopped yelling and followed me to the desk and then grumpily asked, “Why did you scream I’m happy?” I replied, “ Because you were screaming you were angry. I thought we were yelling about how we feel today.”  She chuckled and said, “John but I am angry.” I smiled and said but I am happy. She looked puzzled. I asked her if she thinks her anger out weighs my happiness? She thought for a second and said, “yes I do.” I looked at her at replied, well I disagree. I think they are equal and I will help you with your anger if you help me stay happy. She thought again for a second and said, deal. That’s when the light blub went off in my head and I realized most people equate anger as a superior emotion and therefore more important to deal with.

Anger is not a superior emotion; it’s just an emotion, nothing more, nothing less. If we can work toward treating anger like everything else we wouldn’t be so angry all the time. We wouldn’t have the need to yell about being angry and try to pull others into our anger. Maybe instead we could yell about our happiness because ultimately, we are angry because we aren’t happy!

If you enjoy Sunday Night with John please share it with others, like my twitter and Facebook page, and send me your emails or comment below. Thank you for reading every week and see you next Sunday night.