Anger

I used to spend a lot of my time being pissed off. And, before I venture further, I would like to address the dangling preposition in the previous sentence. Once upon a time, it was the mark of the poorly educated to end a sentence with a preposition. It just wasn’t done. Modern Grammarians (those people from Grammaria), realizing that language changes, have begun to allow this to some degree. There are others, who refuse to surrender to this new fangled allowance, and prefer to create hopelessly convoluted awkward sentences in order to avoid using a preposition with which to end a thought. The preposition at the end of my first sentence, however, is not, in fact a preposition. It is what is considered a verb-particle arrangement. These are verbs, which require two words, one of which would seem to be a preposition. For example: The man was going to blow up the bank. The guy is not going to blow UP THE BANK. He is going to BLOW UP the bank. Blow up constitutes what is called a verb-particle. Thus the phrase piss off is a verb particle, and I, therefore, did NOT end a sentence with a preposition, lest my Grammarian credentials be in question. That being said, I used to spend a lot of my time being pissed off.

I was pissed off because my mother in law used to live with us. This was not a great situation. When Becky and I first became engaged, she was quite concerned over what would become of her mother, with whom she lived and for whom she cared. Inasmuch as I was apparently insane at the time, I told her that her mother should live with us. This, of course, made her very happy, for the time being. Then, we got married, and when the concept became reality, there were some problems. And I say this with all love and respect for her mom, who, as you know, passed away a couple of years ago. She was a strong, gutsy woman, who could also be a royal pain in the ass.

To understand this, you have to understand a little about traditional Mexican culture. Becky’s mom was born in 1911. She came from Mexico with her family to escape the revolution there. This was because her family was from the middle class that did not fare too well under the new regime. She was the last of a very traditional middle class culture. Under that traditional culture, the youngest daughter (and that would be Becky) was expected to forego any sort of life for herself and dedicate her life to the care of her aging parents. (Think Like Water for Chocolate) Now by 1988, Becky’s mom had lived in this country long enough to know that she could have no reasonable expectation that Becky would do that, but she had done that for her mother, and there was this underlying feeling that it was still her due, even if she could not expect it. As a result of this, Becky was always in conflict with an emotional tug-o-war. Her mother expected the lion’s share of her attention and seemed to resent any time she spent with me.

Her mom used to have her running around in circles. She had to have a glass of sherry every night with her dinner, but it couldn’t be just any sherry. There was only one brand of sherry she would drink, so we were often having to run around town in search of it. Because, if the glass of sherry was missing, there would be hell to pay. No, she didn’t yell or scream. She just gave Becky the silent treatment, and you know how that can be. And if that glass was missing, because we couldn’t find it anywhere, she would shoot these reproving glances at me, as if it were my fault we couldn’t find it anywhere. I think she used to think I plotted to deny her the sherry she so loved. We could not go out to a movie unless it was a movie she wanted to see, and she never wanted to see any movie that was made after 1964. We could not go out to a movie without her, because she considered Becky to be all hers until she went to bed around 10 PM. And, due to that silent treatment, Becky was unwilling to confront her about any of these things.

I kept my peace about most of this. I understood the difficult position in which Becky found herself. Of course, I was a little bothered that her mother had these unreasonable expectations. No, that’s not true. I was a lot bothered, but I kept my mouth shut. The thing that used to really drive me nuts were the comments she made. A powerful part of Mexican culture and language is what is called the “indirecta”. The indirecta is a comment made in which the insult is implied. A relatively innocuous form, for example, is that instead of asking for catsup for your french-fries, you say, “Isn’t there any catsup?” This has the same effect as requesting the catsup, as your host will provide it, but it also implies that, as a host, you have been remiss not to offer it in the first place. This is how you ask for things in Mexican Spanish. Were you Mexican, you would probably take no notice of it. If you are not Mexican, you find it a little annoying. Well, Carmen (Becky’s mom) would often make little comments to her while looking at me like, “It’s a shame you can’t have a better car, (meaning my Honda Civic)” or “You used to be so much nicer (to her, while looking at me) before you were married.”

On a couple of occasions, I lost my temper when I heard her say some rather cruel things to Becky, accusing her of never caring about her and such, to which Carmen most commonly responded, “She was my daughter before she was your wife.” Thus, giving her the right to mistreat Becky as she pleased, and claiming her priority for Becky’s valuable time. Poor Becky had precious little time for herself. That was one of the things she loved about running. She could do that early in the morning before her mother was awake. It gave her a couple hours a day just for what she wanted to do.

One of the things I learned from this bad, bad situation, was how different cultures handle anger. I have confirmed this with many of our friends. Latinos tend to get really, really angry, when they get angry. There are a lot of very cruel, hurtful things said, and very intense rage. Then, a short time later, everything is as if nothing had happened. Becky and her mom could have these horrible arguments, and say horrible things, and then next day, everything was just ducky and happy and full of smiles and tenderness. White people, on the other hand, tend to restrain the rage, but carry it a lot longer. Becky’s mom would say mean, hurtful things to me, and I would just stay away from her for a few days. I didn’t want to impose myself upon someone who didn’t like me or want me around. It would take a while for the hurtful things to heal. I can see certain advantages to both styles of dealing with anger. Nothing is repressed in Latino culture, which seems a lot healthier. But those are some mighty nasty wounds while the argument is in progress. White folks, on the other hand, might not inflict such damage, but the resentment lingers and poisons the soul.

The other thing I learned from that situation is that anger takes way too much energy. It isn’t easy being angry all the time. It’s exhausting. I had to learn to be forgiving in order to survive. I also had to learn that there are some people that you are not going to please no matter what you do. The only way I could have made Carmen happy was to go away and leave her daughter to her, and I wasn’t about to do that. I learned that you can only do the best you can do, and if anybody has problems with that, you have to let it go. Sun Tzu recognized, along with every other martial arts master, that as soon as you allow yourself to get angry, you have lost. Most of the martial arts are based upon taking your opponent’s aggression and using it against them. After twenty-two years in the martial arts, I still don’t know how to attack. All of my learning is based upon someone attacking me. The art of Tai Chi is based on the idea that the best way to deal with an attack is to simply not accept it, simply redirect your opponent’s energy somewhere else.

I find a lot of anger has to do with a person’s inability to apologize. We hate admitting we’ve done anything wrong. We hate being wrong. And sometimes you can be wrong, even if you’re right. If someone is angry with you, it is because you have hurt him or her; it’s just that simple. Perhaps you didn’t mean to hurt them. And maybe that person is just being over-sensitive, but that doesn’t mean that s/he wasn’t hurt all the same. Feelings are feelings. The reality is that s/he is hurt. And I regret any occasion in which I’ve hurt someone. And when I apologize for something, it doesn’t mean that I did it deliberately. If I accidentally dent your car, the chances are that I didn’t do it on purpose. That doesn’t mean I don’t owe you and apology (and a certain amount of bodywork). If I accidentally drop your fine china plate and break it, I owe you an apology and a new plate. Why should I be hesitant to apologize when I hurt your feelings unintentionally? I mean, you can have an argument if you want to have one, but even if you win, what have you won?

My kung fu teacher used to tell us that a person had to try to hit us three times before we were allowed to fight back. He also said that any smart fighter will tell you that you only fight if there is no way to run away. This is because in any fight, even if you win, you will get hurt. That is just a part of fighting. If you fight trying to avoid injury, you will lose. The same is true with any interpersonal conflict. If you argue, even if you win, you lose. People will say, well who needs that bum anyway? With friends like that, who needs enemies? But that’s like saying, well, who needed that car anyway, after an accident. You always mourn what you lose. And the truth is, you can’t have too many friends. Everybody has something valuable to offer, and if they don’t, you drop them because they have nothing to offer, not because they pissed you off.

Make no mistake; there are times you have to fight. There are times when you have to argue. But I have learned that you should never argue out of anger. The twenty-four hour rule is a good one. I make my students wait at least twenty-four hours before I will address any conflicts they have, during my conflict resolution time each day. In most cases, after twenty-four hours, they have forgotten why they were angry. There’s a lot of anger going around these days.  As soon as you let anger take charge, there can only be losers. At least, that’s what I’ve learned.