si dawson

Two inter­est­ing things hap­pened to me this week.

The first, let's call "Event X", was that some­one made me very, very angry. There's no value in get­ting into the specifics, but I've wracked my brain & been unable to come up with a worse thing that any­one has ever done to me. There prob­a­bly is, I just can't remem­ber it, so let's put it in the top three.

The sec­ond, let's call "Event Y", was that I made some­one else very, very angry. Again, lit­tle value in the specifics — except to say that it was very def­i­nitely not inten­tional on my part (but of course I'd say that! I'm the one telling this story!)

So, Event X. How did I react? Well, firstly, I don't get angry very often. Not really angry. Maybe once every few years. I can dis­tinctly remem­ber the last time it hap­pened, & that was Feb­ru­ary 2002. I get aggrieved, frus­trated, annoyed, miffed.. but not real, cold anger. All these things are hap­pen­ing less & less these days (thank­fully), but I'm still human.

To start with, I was in shock. Plain, sim­ple shock that such a ter­ri­ble thing could be done to me. I then tran­si­tioned into seri­ous, hard­core anger. I had a very brief flirt with thoughts of revenge — for less than a sec­ond — but where's the value? Then you just have two upset peo­ple. As Ghandhi put so elo­quently put it "An eye for an eye leaves every­one blind."

Then fol­lowed about 5 or 10 min­utes of loud swear­ing (I was home alone), some sur­prise, dis­ap­point­ment, dis­be­lief, & then, as I let more & more of it go, peace. And action, lots of action, to sort it all out.

pic by urline

So, not ideal, yet. But, over it in a day or so tops. Over the worst of it in about half an hour. For me, that's a huge step for­ward. I'm happy with it. I'll keep work­ing on it. It will improve.

Ok, let's leave that for the moment & move on to Event Y. Me mak­ing some­one else angry.

I can't explain how the other per­son felt, except that they were still bit­ter & spew­ing unre­quested vit­riol in my direc­tion sev­eral hours later.

Here's the funny thing though. This wasn't even any­one I know. I'd never met them before. Yes, a com­pletely ran­dom inter­net stranger. Now, if I was going to be com­pletely fair about it, I'd say I might have been a bit pushy. They might have been a bit care­less — not pay­ing as much atten­tion as they could have been. Basi­cally a very minor mis­un­der­stand­ing led to me doing some­thing that they deemed utterly abhor­rent. In my value sys­tem, it qual­i­fies as "uhh, *shrug* so what?" but ok, every­one gets upset by dif­fer­ent things.

Any­way, I could see that this per­son was in pain. They were scream­ing furi­ous (sound famil­iar?) All over what to me was a sim­ple mis­un­der­stand­ing, fixed with one click of a but­ton. Them being upset didn't bother me par­tic­u­larly, I just thought, well, they should have paid more atten­tion, & besides, it's such a minor thing, really, who cares?

But of course, dif­fer­ent value sys­tems — you can see where the mis­un­der­stand­ing might creep in.

The prac­ti­cal upshot was this — that per­son poured a ton of neg­a­tive energy (bile, acid, stress) into their body for an extended period of time. Net effect on me? Basi­cally zero.

Ok, so back to Event X.

Here's what I realised today.

This per­son had been threat­en­ing to do what they actu­ally ended up doing for weeks. I just fig­ured they wouldn't go through with it, so of course it was a huge shock when they did. How­ever, if I'd actu­ally lis­tened to them, and taken action much ear­lier, I wouldn't even have noticed what they'd done. The effect on me would have been absolutely noth­ing. Less than noth­ing. Actu­ally the out­come has been very positive.

So, hang on, I got that angry, for what? Not pay­ing atten­tion? Not act­ing on what I'd already been told. Basi­cally, I got angry because they did what they said they would do. Because they were as good as their word.

Uh, what?!?

I know I got stressed. Prob­a­bly short­ened my lifes­pan in the process.

What a com­plete & utter waste of energy.

Car­rie Fisher had a great quote about resent­ment — but the exact same thing applies to anger, so I'll para­phrase (Thanks Car­rie, love your work!):

"Anger is like drink­ing poi­son and wait­ing for the other per­son to die"

So true. So very, VERY true.