NEARLY all of us have anger issues and managing them is easier said than done. But that doesn’t mean we should not try.
I remember an incident many years ago when I was driving along the BanTal road on my way home from a hearing in Danao City. It was past noontime and I was hungry but between me and the hot soup that I imagined was waiting for me at home was a jeepney that continued to pick up passengers in the middle of the road. On its fourth stop, I managed to overtake the PUJ and, already pissed off, blew the car horn as I passed by.
Unknown to me, the driver gave chase and, to my shock, cut and blocked my way. I got down and grabbed the driver by the collar. Two buttons had flown off from his shirt before he was able to get down, but he did nothing except to tell me that he was one peso to my one hundred. Fortunately for me, nothing more violent came from either of us. It must have been the barong that I was wearing. When I finally got home, the soup tasted flat and I was racked by a splitting headache.
When my anger had subsided, a sense of regret and fear gripped me. What did my outburst gain me? What if he had a gun?
Indeed, the failure to rein in your temper can have serious consequences, especially if you are a public figure. Iloilo Rep. Richard Garin unloosed his anger with a policeman in the most unpleasant way, and he is now in hot water. Few, if any, had bothered to check whether he had reason to rage; all that mattered was that he punched and spat at a policeman, and publicly yet.
Closer to home, Fr. Decoroso Olmilla hit a teenage girl with a cardboard and spent a night in jail as a result. Public condemnation of the “child abuse” was swift, but did anybody even inquire if the girl not only failed to do her assigned task but disrespectfully snapped back when confronted about her neglect?
The circumstances in the Garin and the Olmilla cases are different so much so that talking about both in the same vein would have been unwarranted. The first one clearly involves abuse of authority. Garin and his mayor-father had time to think, pulled rank, humiliated the policeman and debased his badge so that no one would ever commit the same mistake of disobeying their order. Olmilla, on the other hand, acted instinctively, although still wrongly, surrendering reason to uncontrolled passion.
But a comparison has to be made because of the contrasting manner with which the police handled the two cases. Garin physically abused the policeman not only in public view but in the presence of no less than the town police chief. But Garin was never arrested; in fact, he remains free until now. I doubt if the case was even blottered or whether the police would have filed the cases against the congressman if the assault had not attracted national attention.
In Olmilla’s case, there was not a single policeman present when the reverend hit his helper with a cardboard. They arrived hours after the incident and only after a “concerned citizen” had tipped them off. And yet, they arrested Olmilla without a warrant and locked him up overnight. Of course, he is “only” a priest, not a congressman.
Am I glad I am no longer driving.