When we talk about anger... what are the visuals that hit our conscious mind... Raised voices, boiling blood, red nose, clenched fist n maybe some gritted teeth. I am sure all of us have experienced these through the course of our lives... I mean lets face it... if Gandhi says he never felt anger.. its a lie... its the most basic of human emotions to feel anger.. to feel the need to retaliate... to vent all the feeling one suppresses....To say he covered it well would again not be the 'Absolute' truth... but then who are we to question him anyway... he did it his way... we all do it our ways...
In my life I have seen many instances where perfectly sane people have behaved like primal beings on being triggered by something seemingly innocuous.... people who look totally in control of themselves and their situations. In most of the cases... the visuals have been far from pleasant and the realization that these people are just as animal-like as compared to the people they despise... the iconoclasm is complete...
This post is a very small attempt to understand what happens when suppression meets provocation.... when control is lost... when irrationality and the need for destruction overruns sound reason...
Anger over the years has been called a lot of things -- Rage, Ego, Letting-go, venting and what not. What most people dont talk about is why does it manifest itself as the rawest form of human emotion. What is it about this one emotion... that channels all the energy the body has in one single moment and unleashes in such brute force that everything gets blown away with it...
I experienced my first brush with this emotion when I was in school. I as a child was the typical nerd, who did not have many friends... who was not very popular amongst his class-mates... the silent-shy type. Given the pressure on academics and my absolute hatred for it.. I used to hav a tough time convincing my parents that I will be fine.. scores or no scores... In that impressionable age I had seen an appreciable level of suppression where what I had to say was never heard... where my voice used to drown in the deluge of more sane(?) voices... During one of these days.. I was sitting in my class, when a boy sitting behind started playing pranks on me... He kept on calling me names... asking me to show some stomach (?) for a fight and was pricking me with a compass... I kept silent for about 20 mins... but he was not relenting... something was building inside me all this while... I had never felt it before...but I felt this insane urge in me to smash his face...
I waited for 5 more minutes... and then... I did not realize what happened... I jumped up... stood before him... caught him from behind his neck ... took my right arm under his... and pushed him forward... and he thudded into the table ahead...he banged his head against the table and fell.. and started crying... I took me a while to realize what had just happened...the entire class was stunned into silence... some started laughing at the guy... I just stood there and kept looking at him... coldly... At that very moment the class teacher rushed in and took me to the vice principal's office where my parents were called and an anger management therapy was suggested... as innocent as all parents are... they thought I had done it on purpose.. How could I have ever explained them that I had let my innermost devil take center-stage for those 15 seconds...
God knows what helped... the therapy or my realization that nothing remains and everything is in transition... anger stems from the fact that we 'hold onto' things..I can be called crazy for this... but from then on...I never ever got into a physical duel with anyone as I culd see the futility of it all... sainthood ACHIEVED!!
On a more serious note... I was happy that one episode had helped me get sorted in my mind and I would never let it get the better of me in any situation as I had attained modern-day moksha with respect to managing anger. But Life has its own way of kicking you in the ass to let you know who's the boss.
I entered MBA and made friends with people who were the absolute sorted kinds... evolved souls who had seen enough shit in life and were inspiring in a way that "hunger for success" drove them to be what they had become...At first sight.. these are the last kind of people you would associate with violent outbursts.. But then who said life was so predictable and straightforward..
Over the course of two years.. things changed... situations changed.... the fruits and nuts had multiplied... and now these people were as screwed up in the head as anyone else.
Imagine, people studying to be managers which is all about handling temperaments.. throwing things at each other... flinging stuff around... getting into physical brawls... abusing like no tomorrow... calling each other names in the most disgusting manner possible... banging fists on the wall... breaking things... slashing themselves with papercutters... shouting at the top of their voices... creating a scene in public... hitting and kicking each other. Watching all this first hand.. amused me at first... but the frequency of such outbursts scared me. I used to tell myself.. that I am above all this.. I dont need to get involved in all this. At points.. when realization dawned over these people once the dust had settled.. more often than not.. it was found that the central issue was never as big as it was made out to be.. it could have been settled in not more than 10 mins.. but ego ruled and hell came through.
To think that sometime later.. I also got involved in the above said acts is my nadir as a human being.. and the only time in life when I questioned my existence because it showed me my ugliest side and it was not what I had ever imagined myself to be.
Someone once told me that what you hate in others is only a part of you..which you choose to suppress. A part of you.. that shames you..being part of civil society. A part of you which is a collection of everything that is wrong about you.So who do you hate really.. where is the anger directed.. at someone else's wrong doing.. or at one's own self for letting something like dat happen. actually the question is... during the act.. do you have such balance or guts of steel to look into the mirror and see what you have become. Maybe some reason would prevail.. Maybe the world would indeed be a calmer place. But not for nothing was it once said ," Violence, mental or physical, is Sudden... Brutal and Unreasonable." So what is the answer ? wait.. lets first figure the question out and who exactly needs to do the answering. The answers would show up themselves..
