Anyone have a temper

[Bengalzona]

I had trouble controlling my temper as a young man. And like Beaker, I was in a lot of fights. A LOT of fights. I don't have a problem with that anymore. I mock anger as tool nowadays to get certain reactions from people. But I hardly ever actually get angry anymore. Not that much to actually get angry about. And most anger is misdirected or (particularly with men) used to hide other emotions anyway.

Take road rage, for example. If someone cuts you off in traffic, the normal emotion is fear and/or anxiety over the situation. But a lot of guys can't accept that something just happened that scared the shit out of them. Hence the response selected is anger and the situation might be interpreted as a personal attack. Which is interesting because in most situations, you are probably the last thing on somebodies mind when they cut you off. That there is pride rearing its ugly head. Or, more particularly, vanity (a form of pride).

Fear isn't weak. It is a powerful emotion based upon biological processes that you often have no control over. And fear isn't the enemy. The only problem with fear is how people react to it. It is an emotion to be understood, experienced, and accepted for what it is, so that it doesn't overwhelm a person's thinking.

Anger, on the other hand, is weak. It is not based upon the natural 'fight-or-flight' response. We create anger in our own minds. It is funny that people say things like, "You're making me angry!" The simple truth is, we make ourselves angry. We 'decide' to be angry. At least the type of short-fuse , explosive anger we often see.

Resentment, however, is a different type of anger. It is far worse and debilitating. It builds gradually over time and takes on a life of its own. I sure hope none of you out there have resentment right now. It is a beast that will shorten your life, steal your happiness and literally eat you from within. And it generally does absolutely nothing to the person or situation you resent. If you let that beast wallow inside you for too long, it will even undermine your efforts to confront the perceived cause of it later.

There is another type of anger: "righteous anger". Righteous anger is where some feels they have a moral imperative to react to a situation with anger. This is a popular type of anger with some religious folk as most religions have some type of written moral code. Here is the problem with this: Religious moral codes are rules and standards for how an individual should live their life. They are not instruction books for running a society. Righteous anger is, for humans at least, theologically flawed. As far as I'm concerned, Homey don't play that game.