Anger

Recently, I sat down to revise a few of my essays. My peers and professors had already looked at them, so I had some feedback to work with. However, as I read their comments, a sense of incredible anger repeatedly washed over me. I was very frustrated with the feedback; it seemed useless, almost as if they hadn't given a bona fide effort, I won't talk about their intentions right now.

After a while I realized what an effect my anger was having upon me. I couldn't write, edit, or even think. Even reading was colored.

And this is the danger of anger. Anger by itself is not bad. Anger is like pain: it lets you know that something is wrong. However, there's an extremely thin line between anger that illuminates and anger that stagnates. As long as I was angry, I could do absolutely nothing. In fact, I was moving backwards.

What's the solution? Well, the solution is not to eliminate whatever is angering you. Screaming at people for their apparent ineptitude never accomplished anything. Instead of trying to change the things around you, which you will often fail at, change your mind and change your heart.

When I was little my dad taught me a very important lesson that took me about ten years to truly learn. He would always say, usually during one of my tantrums,

"Life isn't fair."

Doesn't most of our anger come from this? Something happens to us and we say, that's not fair! Then we vow to be angry until things are made fair. Take a deep breath, though, and start looking at the way the world is. Nobody is promised a fair life.

While we can't make everything around us perfect, we can at least change our mindset. While I was still sitting at my desk, looking at my essays, I realized that whatever had been done couldn't be changed. It was there, and any anger I had would only hurt myself. I grasped that and began to work with what I had with a new attitude. Hopefully, I produced something good.