Rage

Sometimes anger courses through me.

It’s not, usually, anger at anyone or anything. Rather, it’s a sort of primal, vestigial force that dates to some much earlier time.

It’s toxic, anger is. I feel it everywhere. In my back, my chest, my neck, my jaw, my cheeks. My muscles tighten, my breaths quicken. My body aches, hurts.

The thing is, there’s nothing to do with it. It looks around for a target, for someone or something to affix itself to. And it finds something, or somethings. Always.

It might be a stranger, someone who walks annoyingly, whose voice grates on me, who’s reading a dumb book, playing a dumb game on her or his phone, talking about something banal.

It might be someone close to me, someone guilty of nothing more than being herself, being himself.

It might be a situation in the world, or a political candidate, or a fact, immutable, about the universe.

The challenge for me when I feel anger is to feel it, to allow it to run its course, and not to run away, to flee into action. Just to watch, to experience.

One comment

  1. It is something most of us struggle with, learning to just observe our anger, not act on it. I tried to explain to a child of mine today that it doesn’t hurt anyone but the person getting worked up. But it’s hard for a young child to contain such a rage. I mean, even I don’t succeed most of the time!

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