There is so much here to think about.
I had a club at school with the kids who had problems with anger. They would act out a lot and get themselves in trouble. It doesn't help that most teachers are not trained to identify the signs of abuse in children.
I would ask the kids to describe how much anger they had inside themselves. A lot of them described having so much anger that it could not be contained in the whole world. They would be so happy to get the anger down to manageable levels so that it wasn't creating so many problems for them.
As the weeks went on and I heard the stories there was so much bottled up in the kids ... anger, fear, disappointment, sadness, resentment etc. The problem seemed to revolve around anger and not being able to make it smaller or make it go away. And so they felt really powerless against this huge huge monster of anger. It was controlling their lives. I can see it is controlling my life too, both then and now.
I watched as the kids learned to be assertive and to recognize their feelings and set boundaries. We built a volcanoe and watched it explode. Everyone could relate to that. We blew up balloons and let them go into the stratusfere taking our anger with it.
As the weeks went by I began to see that the anger was keeping these kids alive and sane. They were living in such aweful no win situations that I thought they were frigging marvelous for just surviving. No wonder they had so much anger. It was just the right ammount of anger for the situation. Getting at the feelings beneath the anger was where the gold was. This little group of boys under the age of ten was incredibly dear. They were hellions in the world outside but they were as astute as anyone on this board about the complexity of experience and the pathos of life.
I think every feeling is very important. Anger is best befriended and not driven underground like an unwelcome intruder.
Big anger is there for a reason. And it will sit in our hearts until we transform it or disapates.
If anything I think this group of people is so nice that we dont' listen enough to our anger and what it is telling us. All those red flags.
Anger can go awry and violence isn't advisable.
Basically, i think we live in an emotional dark age where feeling which are fabulous and like the colours of the rainbow or like the clouds in the sky are pretty much underexplored and ignored. Feelings are like Beethoven
s Fifth.
Anger is like the crumbs that led the orphans out of the witches clutches and through the forest back to safety.
Late night thoughts from Sea storm
