Of the gamut of my emotions, the one I find most terrifying is my anger. I have one of those powder-keg tempers with a very long fuse. When I lose it - well, it's not pretty; people get hurt. Fortunately it doesn't happen often. Well, at least not as often as it did.
At one point in my life, my fuse had burned down so many times that I was low on prima-cord and so I skimped on it - and then all it took was the right (or wrong) set of circumstances and I'd be on a 10-second countdown to a mission of total annihilation. Destroy the other guy at all costs. Have the last word, have that sarcastic, biting "you-brought-this-on-yourself" retort. Twist it around like I was the victim. Not very nice, to say the least. It got so bad that I walked around "fighting mad" all the time. And it truly felt like I was mad. Insane, that is.
I found myself thinking about this earlier today. And then I thought of an obscure memory from my childhood.
We were out picking blueberries. (I hated picking blueberries, hated raw blueberries, hated the stains I'd get on my knees, my clothes, etc.) So I was watching anything and everything other than what I was doing - I could pretty well go by feel anyway. We had a lot of cats when I was growing up. Two of them were in the field with me. Now these cats were both males - both un-neutered (before the days of automatic spaying and neutering, who could afford it back then?) These critters tolerated one another; they knew they had to live together but they weren't really comfortable sharing space too closely. Yet here they were. We were their people and they were telling us we belonged to them. (Cats do that; they mark social territory with their presence, which is why your cat will watch you do yard work from a distance).
The neighbour's dog decided to take a short-cut through the field where we were. All of a sudden we heard this low moaning sound. One of the cats had spotted the dog. My head whipped around; this was going to be interesting.
The other cat started yowling as well. They both had their attention firmly fixed on this big dog, about five times bigger than a cat. Then, as if on signal, the sound changed to what can be more closely described as the roar of a bobcat - as they leapt into the air together, the fur on their backs standing straight up, and frightened that poor dog nearly out of his skin! He turned tail and ran toward his house, ki-yi'ing as he went, the cats in hot pursuit, still making that wildcat sound, claws unsheathed. We were hooting and hollering, cheering the cats on. The dog hi-tailed it out of there and only managed to get away with a few scratches on his hocks.
But it was what happened next that struck us. The cats slowed down, stopped chasing the dog. Still filled with kitty-adrenaline from the encounter (as evidenced from their sticking-straight-up fur), they spotted each other. The ears went back - the moaning noise started again and ...
They went at it! Each tried to beat the tar out of the other! Fur flew - the bobcat cries came back, and we watched in stunned silence as for the next 30 seconds they fought like - well, like tom-cats!
Then, just as suddenly as it started, it was over. The "winner" stayed; the other went back toward the house.
We all just LOOKED at each other. Everyone was uncomfortable wth what he or she had just witnessed. Nobody said a word. But everyone remembered it. By suppertime we saw the funny side of it - but in the moment, it sure wasn't funny.
As I thought about this memory earlier today, it occurred to me that if I am primed for a fight, if I am expecting to be attacked, that feeling is not easy to shut off. And if I am prevented somehow from defending myself, there could be some residual and unresolved anger seeking an outlet. That's a very vulnerable - and frightening - position to be in. Someone could get hurt. And often it's not the person I'm necessarily angry at or that I feel somehow threatened by; this person might be beyond my power to influence through distance, time, death, social expectations, or whatever. Someone else - possibly someone close to me - gets the spillover reaction, the leftover fight or flight response that remains while I'm still angry (which makes me more vulnerable, I've discovered). And the end result is always that I end up getting hurt because the other person retaliates.
When I'm living in the moment, facing each experience or each encounter as it comes, I can discharge that anger in healthy ways. When those outlets are cut off, when I let anger build up and hang onto it, or shove it down under the surface ... it ALWAYS resurfaces and in the most distressing of ways.
How much better to acknowledge and work through the feeling, to talk it over with God, and to remind myself that this too shall pass; there is no need to stay fighting mad.
At one point in my life, my fuse had burned down so many times that I was low on prima-cord and so I skimped on it - and then all it took was the right (or wrong) set of circumstances and I'd be on a 10-second countdown to a mission of total annihilation. Destroy the other guy at all costs. Have the last word, have that sarcastic, biting "you-brought-this-on-yourself" retort. Twist it around like I was the victim. Not very nice, to say the least. It got so bad that I walked around "fighting mad" all the time. And it truly felt like I was mad. Insane, that is.
I found myself thinking about this earlier today. And then I thought of an obscure memory from my childhood.
We were out picking blueberries. (I hated picking blueberries, hated raw blueberries, hated the stains I'd get on my knees, my clothes, etc.) So I was watching anything and everything other than what I was doing - I could pretty well go by feel anyway. We had a lot of cats when I was growing up. Two of them were in the field with me. Now these cats were both males - both un-neutered (before the days of automatic spaying and neutering, who could afford it back then?) These critters tolerated one another; they knew they had to live together but they weren't really comfortable sharing space too closely. Yet here they were. We were their people and they were telling us we belonged to them. (Cats do that; they mark social territory with their presence, which is why your cat will watch you do yard work from a distance).
The neighbour's dog decided to take a short-cut through the field where we were. All of a sudden we heard this low moaning sound. One of the cats had spotted the dog. My head whipped around; this was going to be interesting.
The other cat started yowling as well. They both had their attention firmly fixed on this big dog, about five times bigger than a cat. Then, as if on signal, the sound changed to what can be more closely described as the roar of a bobcat - as they leapt into the air together, the fur on their backs standing straight up, and frightened that poor dog nearly out of his skin! He turned tail and ran toward his house, ki-yi'ing as he went, the cats in hot pursuit, still making that wildcat sound, claws unsheathed. We were hooting and hollering, cheering the cats on. The dog hi-tailed it out of there and only managed to get away with a few scratches on his hocks.
But it was what happened next that struck us. The cats slowed down, stopped chasing the dog. Still filled with kitty-adrenaline from the encounter (as evidenced from their sticking-straight-up fur), they spotted each other. The ears went back - the moaning noise started again and ...
Then, just as suddenly as it started, it was over. The "winner" stayed; the other went back toward the house.
We all just LOOKED at each other. Everyone was uncomfortable wth what he or she had just witnessed. Nobody said a word. But everyone remembered it. By suppertime we saw the funny side of it - but in the moment, it sure wasn't funny.
As I thought about this memory earlier today, it occurred to me that if I am primed for a fight, if I am expecting to be attacked, that feeling is not easy to shut off. And if I am prevented somehow from defending myself, there could be some residual and unresolved anger seeking an outlet. That's a very vulnerable - and frightening - position to be in. Someone could get hurt. And often it's not the person I'm necessarily angry at or that I feel somehow threatened by; this person might be beyond my power to influence through distance, time, death, social expectations, or whatever. Someone else - possibly someone close to me - gets the spillover reaction, the leftover fight or flight response that remains while I'm still angry (which makes me more vulnerable, I've discovered). And the end result is always that I end up getting hurt because the other person retaliates.
When I'm living in the moment, facing each experience or each encounter as it comes, I can discharge that anger in healthy ways. When those outlets are cut off, when I let anger build up and hang onto it, or shove it down under the surface ... it ALWAYS resurfaces and in the most distressing of ways.
How much better to acknowledge and work through the feeling, to talk it over with God, and to remind myself that this too shall pass; there is no need to stay fighting mad.
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