Thursday, June 20, 2013

Return Your Angers

I got angry today.  I don’t get angry often; usually I call it “upset” or “irritated.”  My temper, I flatter myself, is relatively cool.  But today, I was absolutely furious, and what’s even rarer, the direct object of my fury was not a concept or a situation, but a person.  He’s a coworker of mine, and most of our fellow coworkers find him difficult to deal with.  He is brash, self-centered, and conceited.  I say this with full honesty, though also out of pique.  Anyway, normally I have no problem dealing with this guy.  Sometimes I even feel sorry for him, because he seems to have no idea why other people don’t like him.  Today, however, I wanted nothing more than to get him out of my sight. 

I brought a book with me to work this morning, which will surprise no one who really knows me—whenever I can get away with it, I bring a book with me wherever I go.  Today’s selection was an old classic, a Regency romance written by Georgette Heyer.  Called “The Foundling”, it is a story set in early 19th century England, with style and plot much owing to Jane Austen--all in all, a classy book.  My errant coworker, however, took one look and exclaimed, “The Fondling?  That sounds like a dirty book.”  He later found the word “ejaculated” in the book, and try as I might to explain that this was an old usage referring to speech and not semen, he loudly teased me for reading a dirty book at work.  The embarrassment and the idiocy I could have forgiven; what threw me into a rage was that he picked up the book while I was away and highlighted the “dirty” word in bright yellow.

I’m sure I surprised him with my reaction.  I carried the book up to him and thrust it in his face, demanding to know what he’d done.  He tried to deny it at first, which only made me angrier, and I told him not to talk to me for the rest of the day.  I spent a good ten minutes stomping around the restaurant and complaining to my coworkers, most of whom were gratifyingly sympathetic.  And though the culprit apologized and ordered me a new copy of the book, I didn’t even look at him for the rest of the day.

The interesting—and slightly alarming—thing is, everything that happened only made me more angry.  The apology and attempts to make amends infuriated me even more—“as if that makes it better!” I snapped to a friend.  Now that I’m finally cooling off, I can admit that it wasn’t so very terrible, that yes, I am a bit irrational when it comes to my books, and that it should be possible for me to forgive him.  Even so, I doubt that I will be able to forget so easily or quickly.

Anger is a force, like magnetism or gravity, that keeps dragging you back.  It takes time and distance to fight free of it, and while certain people have more difficulty with this than others—no comment as to which side I’m on—we all have trouble with it.  In my case, rationality often comes too quickly for me.  While my intellect tells me it’s not good to still be muttering under my breath, my fists and teeth still want to clench and my face still wants to scowl.  In a strange way, anger feels good sometimes.

I think that everyone has a right to anger once in a while.  It’s inevitable, after all, and it’s better to release it at once than to suppress it where it festers.  But we have to be careful to put it away again when it’s time.  In the end, however good it might feel to be angry, it does very little good in our lives or relationships and is better off as a short spark than a blaze that burns us out.





Photo credit: http://chugginmonkeys.com/here_is_your_pick_me_up/6904

No comments:

Post a Comment