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OK...so now that I have voted and the Cook County’s Clerk’s Office has received my vote-by-mail ballot (as of yesterday), I don’t think that I am as angry and anxious as I was a couple of weeks ago: after all, I have done my part...to some extent.
I’ve donated as much money as I can, not as much as I would like. I simply don’t have it like that money-wise.
I could donate more of my time to writing about the upcoming election, posting about it, reminding myself and others that this 2020 presidential election is vital and why.
Which gets me back to the question that I posted last time about anger:
Now, is this the type of anger that, like the anger of Achilles in The Iliad, can boil over into committing all sorts of atrocities?
I think that any type of anger, really, can lead to me committing “atrocities” and taking actions motivated by revenge. I can take and direct my anger onto family, friends, or, in my own way, society as a whole.
I’ve done this many times and in many ways.
Even and especially when I am wholly justified in being angry.
And while I don’t think that I would ever get to the point of allowing anger to be the excuse for me to take “deadly” actions, I ain’t gonna lie and say that I’ve never thought of killing someone for a few moments.
Or committing suicide.
When I get pissed off, the worst thing for me to do is to stew in it.
I have to do something.
A lot of what I have learned to do (imperfectly), I have learned from ideas based on the models of 12-Step programs.
I’ve also learned a lot based on the Buddhist idea of right action, even if don’t agree with the traditional Buddhist conceptions of what “right actions” are.
Thing is, if I stew in anger, then eventually I am going to do something or say something and...it probably won’t be constructive.
(And I am really good at lashing out in anger at people that have nothing to do with the reasons that I am angry in the first place!)
One more thing.
In my case, it was probably low-simmering anger that led me to start putting words to paper (and then laptop) in the first place.
I don’t think that I would have survived to this point in my life if I weren’t able to do that, quite frankly.
So yes, I think anger is quite deadly. It can also be transformed into something...else; more “positive”
But that takes work.
It takes doing something (which usually begins with not acting on my first few thoughts!).
Comments below the fold.
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