Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Anger management
By Henrylito D. Tacio
Regarding Henry
THEY were best of friends since they were in high school. When her company asked Joan to join a group for training in the United States for three weeks, she asked her best friend, Stella, to look after her boyfriend.
After all, they would get married when she returned. "Be sure no other ladies would steal him away from me," Joan asked Stella.
Unknown to Joan, Stella had a crush on Peter the first time she saw him. As Joan was away, she concocted a plan. One night, she asked Peter to come into her apartment since they were having a party. Above suspicion of what would happen next, he came. "Where are the other guests?" he asked.
"It's still early," Stella replied. Then, she took some of the best wines she bought for that occasion. "Drink this while waiting for the rest," she suggested. He took the glass and gulped it. Then, he took another and before he knew it, he was already drunk.
"Are your other guests coming?" Peter asked. Even before Stella could answer, he passed out. She brought him to her room and something happened between the two. After that, Stella immediately called her brother and some of Joan's officemates. She told them that Peter came into her apartment drunk and raped her. Of course, they all came. And true enough, they found Peter still sleeping in Stella's bed.
When Joan's parents called their daughter to report what had happened, all Joan could do was cry. "Why? she wondered. But deep inside her, she knew that Peter would never do such thing as rape for she had known him for more than five years. After the incident, Joan completely changed. From being a lovely lady, she became reclusive and doesn't trust anyone. There was hatred inside her.
There was anger she had been keeping all these years just waiting to burst! John Dryden once wrote: "The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves."
Forget anger, get rid of it immediately. Buddha explains: "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." Thomas A. Kempis suggests: "Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."
Physically, medically, emotionally and socially, anger is harmful. But it can also be beneficial. "Anger can be a great service to others, too," points out Dr. Augsburger. "It can challenge injustices or right wrongs that are oppressing others. It can blaze out with a pure force against evil."
Dr. Augsburger called such anger as "anger disciplined." He explains: "Anger disciplined is dynamic, potent. And there is a place for such anger in life. When we no longer feel deeply, even heatedly about right and justice, when anything goes, when everything is tolerated, all is lost."
He further elaborates: "Disciplined anger has focused its demands on what is just, on what is the good. It is disciplined because it discards the secondary demands for personal safety and security in order to press for those values that endure."
Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian leader and teacher of non-violence, had this motto on his wall at Sevagram: "When you are in the right, you can afford to keep your temper; when you are in the wrong, you cannot afford to lose it."
The philosopher Aristotle puts it in another vein: "Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power, that is not easy."
L.E. Maxwell believes, "We have not only the right to be angry, but, at certain situations, we cannot be right unless we are angry, if angry rightly." "That is one of the truly serious things that happened to the multitude of so-called ordinary people," wrote A. Powell Davies in his book, The Temptation to Be Good. "They have forgotten how to be indignant. This is not because they are overflowing with human kindness, but because they are morally soft and compliant. When they see evil and injustice, they are pained but not revolted.
They mutter and mumble; they never cry out. They commit the sin of not being angry.
"Yet their anger is the one thing above all others that would make them count. If they cannot lead crusades or initiate reforms, they can at least create the conditions in which crusades can be effectual and reforms successful. The wrath of multitude could bring back decency and integrity into public life; it could frighten the corrupt demagogue into silence and blast the rumormonger into oblivion. It could give honest leaders a chance to win."
Whatever happened to Joan? She had forgiven her former boyfriend and her best friend. "There was so much pain and anger inside me," she explained. "I have to let it go or it will consume me totally day in and day out." Today, Joan is a picture of a very happy woman - married to a businessman, with whom she has two lovely kids.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (October 3, 2006 issue)
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