“I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.”
Why is everyone so angry?
I’ve spent the better part of a year asking myself this question. I looked high and low; if I’m truly honest, I’d have to change it slightly to become more accurate.
Why am I so angry?
I could go in many directions to bring you along for the ride. If I can’t start by asking myself, then I will never get anywhere worthwhile for change. The usual monotonous list goes something like this:
We are inundated with bad news. Social media erodes the mind. We’re lonely. Expertise is a myth, as technological advancement sits in the palms of our hands. Extremity owns the marketplace of ideas. Finding common ground feels nearly impossible when extremes feel like our only option. Yet, I believe these may only be symptoms.
These are primarily new, not entirely, but mostly. Yet, anger festered beneath the surface for a long time. These may exacerbate the challenges, but I’m not sure they are the ultimate obstacles. If you want my honest answer to the initial question this piece sets out to answer, it is most simply this: I think we’re angry with ourselves. When you’re angry, could you be angry with yourself? It comes out in various ways, and the comparison trap only feeds our worst tendencies.
Competing With Myself
Recently, my boss texted me something that I have heard him say quite often when working with teams, “What gets tolerated gets rewarded. What gets rewarded gets repeated. What gets repeated becomes culture.” We usually see this play out in the workplace in several ways. Another way of framing this would be: culture is set by the worst behavior you will tolerate. I prefer the repetition of the initial quote. It sticks in my mind and hasn’t left me since he sent it.
We live in a culture that, as a whole, rewards anger. The loudest voice often wins. It’s why our politics are filled with outrageous claims. It’s why attention is what fuels our economy. Anger sparks conversations. It grabs the mind. It also grows beneath the surface when left unaddressed.
I’ve found that my anger is rooted in one of two areas: defensiveness or justice. When we’re honest, I think this fits the bill for most of us. We live with an underlying feeling that we’re a hypocrite, so we feel the need to point out the hypocrisy in the world. It helps us feel like we’re saving our own hide. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes it illustrates the necessary change that needs to take place. However, something Leo Tolstoy once said sticks with me here: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
I read this quote in a weird word search game in middle school. I’ve never forgotten it. Honestly, I have tried to live my life by it. It’s odd what things stick with you and what fades away. Anger works this way too. I hear some of the most heinous things daily, and I can shrug them off. Then I hear or see something that will likely have no impact on me, but it stays with me for days. Why is this the case?
a broken life
I want to revisit the laundry list at the beginning of this post. I think those factors all contribute to the underlying anger in our lives. I also think their compounding effect contributes to a feeling of helplessness. Our inability to express our emotions then leads to a numbing sensation that leads to outbursts of anger.
Our American culture is prone to outbursts. I think it’s a collective grief prying its way out of our souls because we refuse to take the time to acknowledge the hurt that we experience personally, communally, and culturally. We’re more alone than we’ve ever been. I know that I am. Yet, I consistently see images of people I know and love. I’m not really coming up with anything new, but our inability to regulate these feelings leaves us with an underlying emptiness. It makes it easier to choose anger. We are predisposed to it, and so the cycle continues.
We’re so compulsive and addicted to the cycles at play in our lives that we slide through life. It feels like we want to control things out of our control. Of course, some circumstances make things difficult for each of us. But, if we can learn to let go of situations where we cannot exert any meaningful change, would our anger subside? Would it become more manageable? Everything in our lives is used to numb. Nothing seems to be preemptive. I think this could help.
I wish I had the answers. I wish I could offer a magic pill to solve our pervasive anger. Yet, I am drawn to a movie I rewatched recently: Arrival. I’ve had a lot of conversations about this movie since its release in 2016. I won’t dive into the plot, but I will give you my takeaways. We’re all struggling to understand each other. We’re all dealing with complicated histories. None of us really deal with our emotions well. So, why don’t we lean in, listen, and give each other the benefit of the doubt?
Focus on the people in your life, the ones that you see and interact with regularly. Care for them. Listen to their story. Build a life with them. You’ll get hurt. You’ll laugh. You’ll build a legacy.