In Anger

The word once scared me. Anger was the opposite of “safe”, as a child. To be In Anger was to be out of control, a violent grasping for something unnamed, but should be obvious to all who are in its path. Anger was always followed by shame, then sadness, then anger of my own, which I swallowed down as to not regurgitate it on those I held dear, also, I didn't understand it.

Too bad it always comes out sideways when we humans do that.

Much later, I was given some language around emotions and their purposes. Anger, I was told, is energy the heart needs when your sense of justice has been violated. Anger gives the energy necessary for resolution and, if warranted, consequences.

While this helped, my discomfort remained. I didn’t trust anger. It had hurt me long ago and the last few times I allowed myself to feel my own, I acted pretty poorly and lost. For me, anger served no productive purpose except to render judgement and vengeance. I never felt as powerless as I did when I was filled with anger.

I grew up with the verse, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil”. Today, after this year, I am beginning to understand how to be In Anger well.

My cofounders introduced an English idiom to me today: In Anger. From the Cambridge English Dictionary:

If you do something in anger, you do it in a real or important situation as it is intended to be done, rather than just learning or hearing about it:It's one of the best films about football ever made, and yet you never actually see a ball kicked in anger.There are some computer tools that rarely get used in anger but it's useful to know about them.I was trained to shoot a gun, but I never fired a shot in anger.

It’s amazing how much positional intent can change our relationship with our own emotions and story.

In Anger, reframed for me now, is the intensity I feel for things of consequence, aka: when it counts. It’s the answer to questions of,

“Do I have what it takes?”

“Am I significant?”

“Does anyone care how I live, work, think?”

“What if I miss the mark?”

To be in flow, in love, in-vested, requires a certain In Anger. It connotes care, and a treasuring-of. The protectors of the good are by nature familiar with anger, a restorative one. To be In Anger is to be attuned, locked-in, with all the focus of a winter hunter flexing the bow, the newborn hungry after their first cries, and the watchful crossing-guard at an elementary school. Any violation or denial of the need in the moment is deserving of immediate anger, even wrath. It’s life or death, or feels that way.

In June, my mom died. And with her, anger, love, humor, peace, kindness, patience, fear, and a million other ways I learned to feel, to see myself, to see others. Except, they aren’t gone, now they overflow.

And I set free the tears which before I repressed, that they might flow at their will, spreading them beneath my heart; and it rested in them...

- St. Augustine, Confessions | Chapter 9

I got a few more meaningful hours with her before the rush of icy numb realization that her departure was imminent and the morphine took over. She told me "You're so smart, Coby." and, "I love you." in her sign language only moms share with their children. Why is it now that I understand the anger part...now that she’s gone? Now that I can look back and see all the darkness she was holding back with both arms so I could have a chance? All I can remember is my mom loving me with her gray-green eyes, with the last of her strength, willing me to know how much she loves me.

All the apples fell from her tree as I grasped for them in vain.

It’s the moments that mattered which I can’t contain. The unrelenting storm of the small memories quieted by her final breath and stillness echo loudly in my heart, months after I felt hers stop. I wrote this a year before, in May:

My Mother Is A Storm
Beautiful approaching
The relief of a cool breeze
Terrible and drenching
Surrounding and hail
Nourishing and fierce
A wind that brings rain
Needed attention to the ground
Flash and striking
The rumbles of the deep protection
The unstoppable rage
The unbearable exhale
The necessary resolution
A collision of time and space
Explodes into tears
A sorrowful joy
Girdled love
Giving hope
A reminder
And slowly calms
Into steady
Pouring rain
The last of her rending
Giving way to song
To light
To life

She is gone, yet I carry her.

And now I know the meaning of being In Anger, because I mattered to her.

Happy New Year, friends.

Make it count. Because it matters, as do you.