Anger

Anger is like salt. It’s okay in small doses but eventually it corrodes everything it touches. Think about it like you’re eating something that tastes a little bland. You might think a little salt could make it better. Too much and it’s ruined. Worse yet, the line between the two can be pretty thin. And while I will caution you against it, like salt there is a time and place for anger when used sparingly.

I understand it’s easy to say “don’t get angry” and just be patient with people and circumstances. Trust me, as a guy who has wasted a lot of time being angry about things I couldn’t control, I know how hard it is just let it go sometimes. There are moments when it hits you for whatever reason and it’s difficult to not react like a bull seeing a red flag waving at you. When that happens to you the last thing on your mind is that you should count to ten and calm down. What you need to know is that anger is just the beginning of a lot of other, more unappealing emotions. If you let it grab you too hard and fast then anger can become rage. Rage is bad. Let it sit with you too long and it breeds resentment and even vengeance. There are a lot of bad results down that path: hatred, animosity, cruelty. In short, nothing good. If you choose to wallow too long in those emotions, if you get comfortable with that kind of feeling, it will eat right through your soul.

Ok, so dad says anger is a bad thing. But it has to be good for something, right? Well boys, I’m glad you asked. I am a firm believer that everything has an upside. It may not always be equal, but there is good and bad in everything. I’ve warned you about everything wrong with getting angry. Now let me tell you how to salt your emotional soup with just the right amount of anger.

Like I said before, anger is the gateway to a lot of negative emotions. It’s also a great motivator. We’ve all heard the stories of kids who faced down bullies. The seed of that comes from anger. You’re tired of being picked on. You’re fed up with being scared. You get mad. Then you decide to make your stand. Good bad or otherwise you draw your line in the sand and say that it’s going to end here. There is tremendous power in that. You harness that anger and turn it into something productive. It becomes strength. Or you can do nothing, let it fester and spend the rest of your life regretting it. Then it really gets ugly and sticks with you for a very long time. It may even twist you in ways that you never imagined. In short, not good. But it’s the difference between using it for good or letting it take over and ruin your soup. Only it’s not soup, it’s…yeah, okay. I went a long way with that soup thing.

Salt is necessary. It’s part of what makes up the building blocks of life. There is a reason the phrase “worth his salt” means something is valuable. The Romans paid their soldiers in it because it was rare and expensive. Anger is one of those building blocks as well. It’s hard to have any deep emotions when you don’t have the basic ones like anger. But unlike salt it’s not rare. There’s a lot of it. Far more than one needs. It’s cheap and easy but just as corrosive. So you have to be careful with it. Don’t let it make you into the kind of person you don’t want to be. It would be damn near impossible to never get angry. The fact that you can feel means you’ll get angry. But you don’t have to be angry. Those two things are very different. And that distinction can be the difference between being happy or spending your time and energy being miserable. Learn to understand anger and use it. Just don’t choose it.