Anger as a gateway to noticing other emotions
I remember anger. By now we know that our brains are hardly reliable when it comes to memory. The brain reconstructs the past each time we recall it. Moreover, what we perceive in any given moment is shaped by the mental state we bring to it. What follows is a memory already tinted by perception.
So I remember (giggles) that some years ago, at a Delhaize in Belgium, I was walking around the aisles, near the pasta and pasta sauces when a man passed me by and pushed me quite harshly. He didn’t even stop to apologize.
I immediately felt a fire ignite in my belly, oh so powerful. I was indignant, I wanted acknowledgment, an apology, maybe even revenge. I remember observing how powerful I felt, how anger activated me, gave me energy, focus, a goal.
After noticing how I felt, my awareness turned towards the man, and I realized he probably had not, in fact, noticed that he had just pushed me. He was an older man. In my memory, the whole supermarket was vibrant and full of color. I was sharp and bright gliding along the aisles, and the man looked gray and unhappy, dragging his body like a snail towards the vegetable section*.
I remember thinking how seductive the state of anger is. There is no fear, which is nice. It feels activating, also nice. It feels righteous —amazing. A seductive, powerful force. I do not know if anger is as seductive to everyone as it seemed to me that day. But I was very intrigued by what I observed. Perhaps I like anger, perhaps I am even addicted to it, to feeling powerful, energized, righteous. It’s an observation I carried with me for a long time.
Days later I remember thinking, in comparison, how uninteresting the alternative seemed. The alternative, no reaction or even compassion, was the less familiar path. Anger I knew well, while compassion, or even just understanding was simply less familiar, less rehearsed, not immediately available. And they seemed less rich experientially, even boring.
Compassion’s subtlety together with my lack of familiarity made it less readily available. It has taken me much longer to begin appreciating its vastness, its grace, and the freedom it offers.
Anger, so generous in its obviousness, became a guide to other, more subtle and less familiar emotions.
I was very upset this morning. Someone did not show up for an appointment again, and when I texted to check in, my irritation made the response I received sound like an excuse. I noticed my anger rise, I tried to move on but my anger kept rising. Then narratives started to emerge each one making me angrier than the last. For me, narratives function as warning signs, once they start to emerge, it is better to take a step back. Breath. Movement.
To rest on the rhythm of the breath helps. Stopping for a moment to look at the other in a neutral way is also helpful. Asking what is this? is particularly insightful. I noticed the physical reactions to anger: slightly warm face, stomach fire slowly rising, growing muscular tension. Since moving on didn’t work, I decided to engage my body and move with purpose, arrange my son’s toys, plant some poppy seeds that just arrived in the mail.
Eventually, understanding arrived. Then the softening of compassion, by now much more familiar. And then the realization that when something is consistently not working, it may simply mean finding a different arrangement.
As for today, I’ll clean the house myself.
Son eating a boterham (sandwich), completely unbothered, in the Nationaal Park Zuid-Kennemerland, near Haarlem, The Netherlands.
*See more about perception in Buddhism here and mediation instructions related to perception here
Self-Ethnography 