Can you be mindfully angry?
It sounds like an oxymoron but I believe anger can be mindful
Hello friends, apologies for the gap in my writing to you. If you’ve read any of my recent posts you’ll know that the house sit my husband and I are doing in Canada has turned out to be a lot more work than we were told. So I have been unable to write here for a couple of weeks.
In that time, I have faced some challenges to my mindful ways due to the behaviour of the people who own this house. They have been rude, disrespectful, irresponsible, and made an awful lot of assumptions. They have treated us like servants here to do their bidding and in ten years of house sitting, this is the first time anyone has behaved like this towards us. It’s been quite a shock.
One morning, about ten days ago, the homeowner insulted me via a series of increasingly hysterical emails after I gave her the details of our flight back to the UK. A departure date we had already discussed previously. I’m not exaggerating when I say that she flipped out and her emails, which arrived one after the other over the course of about twenty minutes, culminated in her telling me that they didn’t trust us to leave their house in order and we should not be making any arrangements for our next plans without consulting with them first.
After this bombardment I was filled with pure, white-hot rage. It coursed through me and I can’t remember another time when I felt such anger as this. Which initially I didn’t think was very mindful at all. But looking back, I feel I was mindfully raging. I knew I was doing it and I didn't shout or completely lose it, like I would have in the past, but just expressed my feelings about the situation in a forceful manner. I also knew that while my anger felt appropriate in that moment, it was wasn’t the right way to respond. It wasn't helping. So I calmed down pretty quickly. And I didn’t reply to any of those mails.
Several hours later she sent another one. This time a gushing apology. I then realised that I had to stop expecting rational and balanced behaviour from them as they are clearly not rational and balanced people. And that has made it a little easier to bear the stream of demands that arrive in my inbox most days. But only a little and I still feel myself reacting. But I am not going to give myself a hard time about that.
Living consciously and mindfully is a journey. Sometimes it’s straight forward and you amble along happily enjoying the scenery, other times you encounter obstacles that divert you from the path. But one thing I have learned about myself is that I always find my way back now, and the diversions I follow are getting shorter. When I first set out the diversions I encountered could set me back for weeks, but now they can be counted in hours. Sometimes even minutes. Progress!
I’ve recognised too that a lot of the reaction I’ve been having to this situation is because the woman’s behaviour has reminded me of my estranged mother. When I was still in contact with her, she would do the exact same thing and my inbox and voicemail would be filled with escalating messages of aggression telling me all the things that she believed were wrong about me and my behaviour.
There is a place for mindful anger. It’s the kind of anger that drives us to protest against the things we know are wrong. History is filled with activists who have been mindfully angry about injustices — Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Greta Thunberg — and used it as fuel to try and bring about peaceful change. It’s the kind of anger that drove me to write my second novel, Remember Tomorrow, which was inspired by what I witnessed and learned over almost two decades of working in environmental journalism.
So can you be mindfully angry? Yes, I believe you can. Have I been mindfully angry over the past couple of weeks? Yes and no. I’ve reacted and had to bring myself back to mindful awareness many times. But my angry reactions are nowhere near as huge, or long-lasting, as they used to be. It now takes a lot more to provoke me to anger and I am a lot more mindful in many ways than I used to be. And the thing that I am most mindful of at the moment, is that it’s only two weeks until we leave. Hooray!
What about you? Do you think we can be mindfully angry? Have you noticed a difference in your own anger when it arises? Do let me know in the comments or by replying to the email.
What about the characters in the stories you’re writing? Are they lost in their anger or are they appropriately angry and using it to drive the change they need to see? Or maybe they’re somewhere in between on that journey.
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Amanda, It seems to me that you are using your anger as a way to know yourself better.
Lessons come in the shape we can best understand. Thank you for your willingness to share. D
I really appreciate this topic. I've been pondering anger as generative (I keep using that word lately!) for awhile. I've stuffed what I think of as naturally occurring angry responses over the years, at abuse, at crossed boundaries, etc. When I allow that anger to surface and am with it, I tend to think it burns off "dross" so to speak. It clears cluttered space in me. Of course, how I allow the anger to surface is really important. I'm learning that I'm kind of a volcano, pretty fiery. My responses tend to be strong. I want to notice my responses and be with them without allowing them to burn me up or anyone else around me (they've done both in the past). I also think that as I allow anger to come and practice being with it, I will have more balance (and probably less knee jerk anger) in the future.
Thanks for this Amanda! And yes, to counting the days.