As a 9-10 year old I remember being so angry with my older brother that I wasn’t talking to him. There we were, side by side, at the dinner table, me holding onto my righteous anger and him having a normal evening meal. Me in my angry silence and him chatting and enjoying his meal with the rest of the family. The contrast in our experiences was suddenly obvious to me. I was the only one suffering here. My brother wasn’t holding onto anger. He was, therefore, the ‘winner’ of whatever our argument had been about, simply because he had moved on. Perhaps he had never been angry at all, because, quite frankly, I have no idea why I was cross. It was a blinding moment of clarity. Perhaps the lesson was so clear because no-one else was paying attention to my moodiness.

As a consequence I find it hard to maintain any rage experienced in a dispute or when I feel hard done by. Often I don’t even remember minor issues. Certainly I find rage leaves me quite quickly. This leaves me free to move on, to deal with whatever the actual issue is in a more rational way. (Please understand I’m not saying I’m a saint who always forgives and forgets, but the emotional heat generally leaves)

I’d like you to consider this question – Who suffers most; the person who is angry or the person at whom the anger is aimed? Let’s consider some other examples.

As a young driver I was told stories of revenge against the haters on the road. Amongst my favourites was the young woman whose car had stalled on a bridge. The helpful driver behind her continually blew his horn as a reminder that she should be driving and not impeding his progress. Useful as his behaviour may have been (to help her think calmly about what might be wrong and solve the car problem), it shifted her focus to the driver behind her. She got out of the car, walked back to the honking driver and tapped on his window. When he wound the window down, she reached inside the car, grabbed the keys from the ignition and threw them over the side of the bridge. Before her victim could recover, she had returned to her car and left.

The above story may be a myth rather than true, but the conclusion I draw is how much better everything would have ended if the ‘honker’ had been helpful rather than blaming. Maybe his future really did depend on those few minutes delay. However, his initial angry reaction led to more bad behaviour and placed him in a much worse situation than a minor delay.

I also learnt that you can’t expect empathy or helpful behaviour. When my own, old car stalled in the centre lane of a busy road, (on its way to get repaired and have the dead battery replaced) I knew I wouldn’t be able to start it. With the above, and similar stories in mind, my first thought was to head off the anger of the driver behind. I got out of the car and explained that he would need to go round as I was unable to start the car. To my pleased surprise I was rewarded for this behaviour. Almost instantly there were people helping get my car off the road and jump starting it so I could be on my way again. (I was about 21 at the time and female so this may have helped.)

My point is that if we approach people with a reasonable and open attitude things are more likely to turn out well for all concerned. That criticising and being negative about others may be a ‘fun’ way to pass the time, but actually engaging with all this negativity helps no-one and generally makes our own lives poorer. We need to approach others as if they deserve as much respect and opportunity to explain themselves as we would want for ourselves. Anger and hating hurts us at least as much as it hurts those we hate. It closes our minds and causes us unnecessary suffering. The person we hate may be totally unaffected by our feelings, or we may later discover that we made a mistake and have made them suffer wrongly.

Again I stress that it is important to take responsibility for our own part in any conflict. But having examined our own behaviour it is important not to dwell on the pain other’s insist on hanging onto. This is their own stuff that they need to work through for themselves and we cannot be responsible for it. We decide if we wish to be angry or distressed by others behaviour, just as other people make their own decisions about how they react to issues and the impact they allow things to have on them. There are always choices, even if they all seem like bad ones.

Maybe these thoughts will help as we consider friends, family, work, other celebrations and all the extra things we have to do at this busy time of year.

Best Wishes

Alison