I suffered from violent tantrums when I was younger. I know how it feels like being angry until you can’t breath. I know how it feels for anger to take over your body until you are trembling and burning up. I know how it feels like to lose your temper and also feel like you are losing your mind, control over your emotions. I know how it feels like to break stuff and to throw dangerous objects at your siblings (ask my older brother) while you are burning up and crying uncontrollably.
The quickest way to end a friendship is to say something out of anger. I’ve been there. I know how it feels not to talk to people you live with because you are so mad at them. I also know how hard it is to mend those fences when you’ve cooled down.
I knew I had a temper problem when I started fearing my anger. I knew then that I needed to work on it. Thank goodness I did. These days I’m able to let things go and confront issues without blowing up and throwing stuff around, and lord, without crying!
Which is why I get concerned when I see grown people still losing their tempers to the point where they can’t decipher the line where they’ve just gone too far. If you are over twenty, your anger shouldn’t get a hold of you to the point where you can’t hold your tears back and you can’t think rationally.
There is no such thing as a healthy dose of anger. Anger is not rational. And anything you do out of anger is not rational and you are bound to regret it.
Rational people don’t drive over cheating husbands. Rational people don’t shoot their ex-girlfriends in broad daylight. Rational people don’t vandalise their boyfriends cars. Rational people don’t start screaming at other people at parties.
I’m not saying that I never lose it. I still do. Sometimes. And yes, taking a deep breath and counting to ten doesn’t help me. But keeping my mouth shut does. Keeping my mouth shut and walking away helps.
I live in a country with a lot of angry people. Some mad that the past is gone and they yell at petrol attendants and shop assistants, and speak to them like dirt. And you can tell that they are thinking that if it was 1980 they wouldn’t have to deal with “incompetent black people”. This is the worst. Anger merged with hatred and bitterness and nostalgia. I don’t get it. I’m not a disgruntled white man who has no education and cannot immigrate to Australia or Britain. Whatever.
On the other hand we have angry young black people who feel like nothing much has changed except that a few black people now live in suburbs and drive nice cars. Young black people who are mad at the increasing gap of inequality in the country, and feel like foreigners are valued more than they are. Burning other people’s homes isn’t going to change the situation. Destroying what other people have out of hate and frustration with the fact that only a handful of people have managed to rise above poverty line. Killing people because they aren’t South African isn’t going to make the government realise that they aren’t doing enough.
Someone’s BBM Status read that “Our gaze must be firmly trained on the future and not the past”. But how hard is this to do when the past affects our present? How often are we weighed down by history. And how many of us are really that adaptable to change? How hard is it to see anything when you are filled with anger? Sure, if you get knocked down, rise again. But how many times can you fall without breaking something?
And maybe freedom from our frustration and anger will only come once we’ve broken something, hopefully not our spirit.
