A small epiphany

One of the things I find distressing about Life These Days is how angry everyone seems to be. And not angry over actual injustices, over things they can motivate themselves to fix, but that kind of free-floating anger where people lash out at low-paid store clerks, or yell at colleagues, or are surly to their spouses, or in general are just ANGRY and make the world less nice for the innocents around them.

I was at a meeting today that involved someone being rather angry. Inappropriately, or so I thought.

And it dawned on me: a lot of the anger I'm seeing expressed right now is maybe displaced fear*

That people get afraid, and they don't know how to deal with it, so they get angry. It's maybe a lizard-brain thing: "If I puff myself up real big and look extra dangerous, the predator won't mess with me." And okay, that's fine if you're out hiking and you see a bear (as long as it's not a mama bear with cubs, getting up on the balls of your toes and flapping out the sides of your jacket and yelling will often make the animal turn tail and run). But in dealing with fellow humans, specifically those not fixing to hurt you, it's a pretty useless behavior.

(*This may also explain some political phenomena we are currently witnessing)

An aside: I also realized that about myself, when I'm scared? I'm a lot, lot more likely to cry. Or maybe not cry outright, but be shaky and borderline weepy.

And....dangit, I was going somewhere with this but the phone rang (another "Unknown Number") and broke my train of thought.

But I wonder if a lot of the seemingly-misplaced anger we see (from road rage on down) is the result of people being scared: scared about the future, scared about their jobs, scared about what's going on in the world.

I also realized that maybe my tendency not to get angry when scared - and my active revulsion at expressing anger to someone who is "under" me in the food chain (e.g., a store clerk) is actually a powerful weapon of sorts. Not QUITE the whole "Fear is the mind-killer...when the fear has gone, only I will remain" mantra (I have never read Dune, not sure that I need to), but the idea that by keeping my head when everyone else around me is losing theirs, maybe I can perhaps manage just a bit better.

I do wish I were better at not reacting with fear MYSELF when someone near me is angry. I react really badly to other people's anger; at an extreme I actually do start crying (that happened once in an extremely emotionally charged meeting - at church rather than work). I am not sure how to do that, though - how to sit in a room with someone who is angry and yelling and acting out (not in a violent way, if someone picks up a chair or something else that could be a weapon, I am gone, gone, gone) and just let their anger wash over me without it touching me.

But one thing I resolve: When I am fearful, I will not get angry. I will not lash out at people who are innocent parties. One thing I strive to do is not to make worse the lives of people who have nothing to do with causing my current problems. And I am pretty good at remaining controlled if I ever have to talk with someone who IS causing my current problems. (Though more often than not, my problems are either my own danged fault, or they are things outside of any one person's control)

But yeah. I'm kind of unhappy right now. There's too much anger around and it seems a lot of it is directed at people who have the least wherewithal to do anything to fix the problem the person is being angry at. The whole kick-the-dog thing writ large.

(I will also say, in my experience, about 85% of the time? I can get problems solved faster and more to my satisfaction by being very calm and very polite. By, for example, saying to the customer-service person, "I hope you can help me with this...." and "....you can see this is a problem" and in general acting like "I know you are a reasonable person and I know you are smart and I would like for you to help me with this." MOST of the time it works. Once in a while you get someone who is just so grudge-y or so burned out it doesn't, and then I usually just walk away with the resolution not to shop at that store (or whatever) again, but most of the time the problem is resolved satifactorily)


ETA: "The perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment" (1 John). I guess all my training, all those years sitting in church has sunk in because I do try to meet people from "a place of love" (if that doesn't sound too Treehugger).

(Someone on Twitter quipped about "the perfect fear that drives out love" in re: some things going on in the world)