« Ambivalence | Main | Moving On »
July 29, 2004
Baggage
I realized today that I am angry. Very, very angry. And I'm not sure what to do about it.
My general philosophy is that it takes too much energy to stay mad, so it's best to just let petty grievances go. I thought I was living by this standard until I found myself boiling over with rage this evening--over things that happened weeks (and sometimes months) ago. Realizing that my mother would completely freak out if she discovered all her china smashed to bits, I resisted a destructive impulse. Now, several hours later, my rage has turned into seething. Sulky, bitter, seething--with occasional bouts of grief. As you might imagine, it's not very attractive.
Even though I am nominally angry with two specific people, I am mostly angry with myself. And that, without a doubt, is the worst kind of anger. As Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC) wrote in Oedipus Rex, "The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves."
I feel stupid for the way I acted (not standing up for myself, regardless of the consequences) and furious that I allowed myself to get pressured into compromising my values.
I'm torn between confronting the people in question and explaining why they should be deported to Madagascar, and just "letting it go". Here's the problem with both:
1) Confronting these people (who are obviously in the wrong) would do nothing to help me feel better about the way I handled the situations in question. In fact, any confrontation would probably only make things worse, since they would feel that their behavior was validated by my angry reaction.
But...
2) "Letting it go" is clearly not working. I don't want to go through life keeping a 100 yard distance from glass items.
So, I think the solution is to let things go for now, but find a cheap set of dishes to smash for tomorrow.
Thoughts of the day:
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
I love life...Yeah, I'm sad, but at the same time, I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like...It makes me feel alive, you know. It makes me feel human. The only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt something really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good. So I guess what I'm feeling is like a beautiful sadness.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Raisins, 2003
