Anger 02

Hi All, Welcome to MoneyWell's blog,

Anger is one of an emotional state humans could experience. Everyone’s response or reaction to the anger is different. But one thing remains same in all of us, is the biological response which is happening inside our body. Anger triggers a series of bio-chemical reactions inside human body. The physical effects of anger include increased heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of adrenaline and noradrenalin. As a stress hormone, noradrenalin affects parts of the brain where attention and responding actions are controlled. There are lot more technical happenings inside our body when we get angry. Let us start this post with a quote as usual.

“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.” - Buddha.

In our day to day life, there are many times we get angry. I am trying to list some of that.

1. Waiting in a bus stop/ railway station / air port for quite long time. The bus / train / flight which have to arrive on time haven’t.
2. Traffic Jam
3. While driving we come across somebody violating traffic rules.
4. The attendance is very low for the presentation you organize.
5. The person, who you are talking to, is not listening to you.
6. Your spouse does not understand your point of view.
7. Your new washing machine is not working.

And there are so many reasons we can grow the list. While we read this, it might look very simple reasons. But the amount and intensity of anger we show for these simple reasons are not in proportion. Here I am forced to mention (again) a quote by Aristotle.

“Anyone can become angry – that’s easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way- this is not easy”. - Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics

Going by this, it invalidates all the simple reasons I listed above for getting angry. I feel the main reason why we get angry is “anyone can easily become angry” nothing else.

One real story.

I have seen very small kids are also getting angry. Once I have seen a kid (about 2 years old) was demanding his father to buy him a balloon. His father refused to buy that. After a while the kid started screaming aloud the demand. Still his father is not buying that. The kid got angry and started to hit his father and roll on the platform in the road. The kid got so much angry he couldn’t scream now and he is gasping. Already some people started to watch this now. Now his father became very angry by the kid’s act. It made him feel shame in front of others. Now he started to shout at his kid and hit severely in public.

I realized where the kid has learnt to become angry. We have lot of such real stories with us. It might have happened to us or we would have witnessed or heard. Take any one of the stories, preferably yours, and analyze the situation by answering to the following questions

1. How did I express my anger? Did I express it in a right way?
2. Whom did I express my anger to? Is he/she/it is the right person?
3. Did I express my anger to the right degree? Or did the intensity of anger I express is proportionate with the reason?
4. Did I express my anger at the right time?

I can challenge most of you for the answers. None of us would have got “yes” for all the questions. This means we have not learnt how to get and express anger appropriately.

I have a question for all of us,

Does any one of us use a big AXE to cut vegetables for cooking?

No right! Why because, It is not the right tool to be used. We have a vegetable cutter or appropriate knife for doing that job. We have different kind of tools for cutting vegetables, chopping meat, and so on.

Similarly anger is also a tool which helped, prevented and saved humans when their life is pretended often by animals and other human beings. Anger is such a powerful tool when it is used inappropriately, could cause lots of damage to the host.

Please remember to ask this four questions when you are about to get angry and never praise disproportionate and inappropriate anger.


Take care,

I feel therefore I am

MoneyWell

On Anger..

Hi Friends,

Welcome to MoneyWell's blog page

i am regularly following Anbusivam's blog, in that recently he has written about Anger Management. Anger is one of the powerful emotions we can feel. Most of the time Anger is depicted as a crime. The very reasons can be, outcome of the anger is always scathe.

What a person do out of anger

1. can damage whom we were angry with.
2. can damage that person who got angry.
3. can damage the family and relatives of that person.

Here i cannot ignore to quote the works of Thiruvalluvar. (Thiruvalluvar (Tamil: திருவள்ளுவர்) was a celebrated Tamil poet who wrote the Thirukkural, a work on ethics in Tamil literature. )

He has written a Athikaram ( 10 couplets ) on Restraining Anger. i would like to quote some of it.

306. Friend-killer is the fatal rage
It burns the helpful kinship-barge

In this couplet, he characterizes anger as a disease which kills whoever has it and also kills whoever affined to the person who has the anger.

304. Is there a foe like harmful ire
which kills the smile and joyful cheer

This narrates very first practical experience of anger. We cannot smile with joyful cheer whenwe are angry at something or some one. So anger kills both. In this couplet anger is characterized as the biggest enemy to the mankind, because it kills the bliss ful smile and joyful cheer.

By quoting Thiruvalluvar i can bring out the points for benefits of not getting angry and personnel casualty of getting angry. One more quote with which i would like to conclude on anger and how to handle it, that is Aristotle's (One of the greatest of the ancient Athenian philosophers; pupil of Plato; teacher of Alexander the Great (384-322 BC) )

“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.”

When i read it for the first time, i was admired by the discipline he demands for getting angry. He is not stating anything good or bad about anger. But in the deep sense he brings out the imbalance one would have to experience when they are angry.

When one gets angry, if he is able to think about, whether it is right degree, right time, right purpose and the right way to show it. Then he/she is thinking about the feeling ( the anger) he/she has. By doing so one can reduce the magnitude of anger they are going to get, by that one can save lot of his/her energy, avoid lot of health problems and other damages.

Lets have a cheerful smile !

with lots of love,

MoneyWell