Anger Burns Up All That is Noble-Daily Meditation 6.20.23

Today’s quotation:

Anger burns up all that is noble.  It is a consuming fire, born in the fires of destruction.  Ultimately, it leaves the victim nothing but a wreck of his or her better self, burned out, blackened, and dead, like forest trees over which a great fire has swept.-Julian P. Johnson

Today’s Meditation:

When I witness people being angry, I wonder what triggers their anger.  I’ve seen what other people have done, but I’ve also seen others respond to the same types of things without becoming angry, losing their cool, and letting their anger take control of them.  And that’s what I see most when I see angry people–human beings who have let their anger take control of their actions and words and are doing and saying things they normally wouldn’t even consider doing or saying.

When we allow anger to take over, we risk allowing it to consume us.  Some people hold on to their anger for so long that they’ve lost touch with what it means not to be angry.  We do have better selves, though, and we must allow that better self to deal with the issue at hand rather than allowing the anger to cause us to do or say things that we’ll regret later.  Many a relationship has been killed by words said in anger; many people have lost some of the best things in their lives because they allowed their offense to stifle their better selves and unleash their worst sides.

Our anger is natural–some things happen, or others do that will anger us.  What we do with that anger, though, is up to us.  I like to use it as a trigger, if you will, a catalyst that forces me to look for another side of the story that makes me angry.  If someone says a lie about me, will I be just as angry if I consider that the person is miserable and that lying about other people is a way that he or she is trying to deal with dissatisfaction in life?  If I’m angry because someone stole from me, what will happen to my anger if I find out that the person who stole is going through callous times and just made a bad decision?

Let’s not let our anger burn us up and leave us a shell of our former selves.  Anger is a genuine emotion, but if we allow it to consume us, we’ve lost a tremendous part of who we are, and we can cause true damage to ourselves and those we love.  When we become angry, let’s turn that anger into something much more constructive than anger, which is often destructive.

Questions to consider:

What kinds of things get you angry?  Does your anger help to change or prevent such things?

What options other than anger are available to respond to certain situations?

Why can so many people respond to many things with nothing else but anger?  Does their anger help them to improve their lives?

For further thought:

Tremendous energy comes with anger.  Do not suppress it:  that would only hurt you inside.  Do not express it:  this would not only hurt you inside, but it would also cause ripples in your surroundings.  What you do is transform it.  You somehow use that tremendous energy constructively on a task that needs to be done or in a beneficial form of exercise.-Peace Pilgrim

If you missed our last Daily Meditation, it is here.