Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

The Baggage Car on the RR of Thought...
5/18/11 07:00 am

My windows are moaning this morning and the wind chimes on the deck are restless. Today is supposed to be another big blow and it already is kicking up.

I have been thinking a lot about anger this morning. How we carry our anger around with us, our slights, our perceived hurts, our inabilities to get beyond or above (perhaps?) what someone did to us. Someone or persons we love especially. Now if a stranger hurts you it is different than if someone close or in your scope does. You can usually get beyond the anger (not always of course, depending on the level of damage!) Small slights or insults are more easily forgiven or forgotten. If you carry your anger around with you, forever and ever, what does that do to your spirit? All of the definitions of anger are purely negative. But anger is a human emotion and something we all experience just as we experience joy or sadness or grief or any other human emotion.

These emotions that I experience, we experience (humanly speaking) are all things we must work through, deal with or perhaps in some cases, stuff deep inside, and not deal with at all. My examples are personal but anger is not something I carry around with me. I am not angry usually but frustrated or sad at those who expend an angry energy towards me. My angry moments are usually brief and quickly over with.

Cecil's family has certainly expended a lot of angry energy towards me in the past but mostly, my response is not to return that energy but to feel compassion and try to understand "why?" they act and acted the way they did. His mother was a simple woman with little education and did what she did because she was unthinking and knew no better and his brother and sister both were brain damaged, one in an accident, one with a stroke. His hurt at their seemingly unloving and angry reactions and feelings has made him retreat from them. I could never do that just as I would have never put up with the shit all those years but he and I are different. He really loved them and expected that they would love him. What should or could a son or brother expect? Cecil is lucky in that he still loves and gives love mostly freely despite his conditioning. But he still carries that anger around with him, unforgiving of the deep level of their hurt. I think, I believe, that he is diminished and less than the man that he is capable of becoming as long as he carries that burden of anger. Yep, that's what SooZ thinks!

Now that doesn't mean I think that Cecil should just invite them all over to dinner or back into his life or over his threshold. Nope, I just think that he needs to forgive and understand the "why's" or at least consider them. His sister, whom he was closer to than even his mother before the stroke has reached out to him in a most fumbling and inappropriate way, but she has tried to call him, to talk to him in some way. His brother carries his hate and jealousy about Cecil around like a backpack, letting any and all know how much he loathes his brother. Loaded down with his own insecurities and long held wrong headed opinions.

Family dynamics are complicated or can be even in the best of situations and upbringings. But the bottom line is love and compassion, not anger or unhealed wounds. You or I or any one being cannot forget but we can forgive, even the most egregious, horrendous actions. People that forgive the killer of even their children, once justice is done, are far better served than those that seek revenge and carry hatred around.

I don't think that I can maintain any emotion forever. I will experience all in this roller coaster life, again and again until the mind stops ticking. Rising above this "monkey mind", this duality of experience will probably, not surely, be fleeting. It has been up to now. But I don't and won't carry those emotions around like a donkey with a burden. Putting them aside takes effort, a great deal of effort! And it takes awareness of one's self and what one is doing to oneself when we are lucky and fortunate enough to do so. Some will never get there but that is their path, their rocky road to traverse. I have mine. I will honestly and earnestly try to keep a clean and empty mind. To throw out the trash regularly with meditation and being here, now.

Chang is whining and derailing this train of thought and I must go, must move to attend to what needs attending to.

Check out Pema Chodron's book, Don't Bite the Hook, Finding Freedom from Anger, Resentment and Other Destructive Emotions for a really good take on the subject.

yeah, that Pema Chodron´s book is great! (since the change value between dollar and pesos is easiest now here, I´ve bought some Shambala´s book last year, the one you mentioned included).
& sad story about Cecil´s family, Soo... he´s a beautiful sort of miracle, though!
I can be a very peaceful person and a very angry one in a twist, & when those states are highlighted in some way & digging deep sadness is always there, in a form or another.

gracias for sharing this with us!

Love Shambala, especially a Shambala book store in Palo Alto, California that Cec took me to back in 1970 (?) It had a tea room in the front where you could sit and have a cup and relax with a book, comfy pillows and all. Wonderful! Pema is a great guide too, I have a "pocket book" of hers that I keep by my computer. Small, only a few inches across, but the words and messages are HUGE!

Cecil is a miracle! You got it, he is! We all have our twists and turns but that "deep sadness" is a sorry state to be in. I am mostly joyful but not always, I have my depression (especially in winter!) and "clam up" moments where I don't have much to say or write about. But don't we all? I think so...

thank you for reading and responding Arcadia. All these years and we get to know each other a tiny bit more. Salud!

every family has its own way to work it out. If there's love and caring, it almost doesn't matter what the situation is, cause the family bond will pull it together in the long run. judih

I had a conversation with Cecil about his brother a couple years ago. I told him he reminds me of my brother who is the kindest man I have ever known.

He spoke of his brother to me and what the situation was. He did not sound angry to me Soozen, Just sad.

My brother . He was always gentle with his children, always used irony and humor, he loves to draw so sometimes he would draw pictures for his kids, cartoons to illustrate the situation, funny cartoons. He is a musician, he would use music.

Jack, Cecil's brother is definitely not the "kindest man I have ever known" as you describe your brother. Even his children have a difficult time dealing with the man and have both told us so.

And Cecil has not and may never forgive him. I could go into some of the dynamics and situations but your brother and Cecil's are totally dissimilar from what I glean from your description. Bob Lee yells to get his point across, calls people names, and money is the most important "thing" to him, not love or family. He is a very sad and angry man.

It is sad but anger is on both sides is in the mix. My concern is not with the brother, but with Cecil's well being. I understand Cecil's anger but I also know it is a "habit" instilled from an early age. i.e. his mother would sometimes not speak to us for weeks (and we were in the same house!) when she was mad. It was a mystery to me and not my family dynamic at all.

They used anger to communicate, all of them...and he picked up the family trait but I, unlike him who had never had so much anger directed my way would not abide by Cecil redirecting that anger at me which he tried to do in some of our 40 years together. And he still has a tendency to "blow up" when things are not going well but we are still learning and working on this and he is trying very hard to stop and breathe and let go. Ask him now...it is a painful subject but we are shedding light on it instead of the darkness of shame or embarrassment.

i was taught to detach- i never said i was good at it- it doesnt matter where i go- i always hear "let go" it is like a nightmare- i think i have spent far too much time dealing with how i feel- it is only it would seem a rare few that give a shit whether i live and or die...my children- i quit smoking- i wanna be a grandma-so whatver- my life has never been a bed of roses= but i sure like the way they smell=here we have orchids and plumerias and exotic fauna and flora- i just wanna swim and hike- i wish i had more amazing ideas to share-it is in the soul- it is in the skin- and sometimes they are just not in there-so if i do not take any of this very funny world serious- then well i can fly

Gosh, you said the word "plumerias" and I was transported to our trip to the islands and the smell of those trees! My nose couldn't get enough of them.

It sounds to me as if you have exactly what you need and how very fortunate you are to have even the opportunity to be a grandma. (It is one thing I will never be and wanted but that is not in the cards for me.)

Whether it is a cup of tea or a kind word, we all have something to share, I believe. As for me, when I sit down to write or even make a piece of jewelry or any creative thing, I really never know what will come out as there is no forethought but just "flow" and I "let go". Sometimes, and I could say frequently, it is "inspired" (so to speak) and other time the inspiration is just not there. Letting go of anger and past slights is just being in the moment, not therapy or obsessing about the past, so you are here now. No thought needed...

And as for that infamous "bed of roses", rose petals fall and wilt and die eventually and no one, I think, can lay in them but for those brief and glorious moments. Just being human, the human condition, entails suffering as well as joy and ecstasy and for me, finding the balance between the light and the dark is a quest. Our yearnings to be more, to have more, to want more other than another "shitty day in paradise" is what makes us humans unhappy. If you can fly and not take the world serious, I think you got it covered. And I would say, "take a hike!" A great way to spend one's time...!!!

i do....