I recently saw a bumper sticker that read “Do you feel safer yet?” I could relate. Because usually I don’t. But the sentiment got me thinking about the countless times I have turned to anger, resentments, or good old revenge when I have felt threatened or challenged, or worst of all, scared in the past. Anger has long been a secondary addiction for me – one that can easily go “under the radar” and can even be enabled, or strengthened by people around me – many of whom have no idea the damage they are doing through their words and actions.
Anger sells in our society. As a male, I can tell you that the messages around getting, being, and staying angry start very young. And most of them think it is pretty cool – and very normal. My favorite superhero as a kid was “The Hulk ” a.k.a. Dr. Bruce Banner. I had a few Hulk tee shirts, a lunchbox, various notebooks, and a dark green kickball. I must admit I was envious last Halloween when a friend’s 8 year old son showed up at our house wearing his Hulk costume. It was made out of fabric, and the arm and leg muscles could be blown up with air to instantly increase muscle size – no steroids required. Maybe this year I’ll hunt one of those costumes down. Thor would be a good second choice, I’m sure he’ll be all the rage this year – but my first choice would be The Hulk – he didn’t need any stinking hammer to bust some things up!
None of my prized items from childhood showed pictures of Dr. Bruce Banner on them, or if they did, it was only half of his face, morphing into Hulkness. I did not watch the show to see Dr. Bruce. He was pretty weak. And he never picked up heavy things and threw them around. But Dr. Bruce did get to say the line I liked the most – the signature line – the one that sticks with me to this day: “Don’t get me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.” And that was the primary message I took from that show, and many like it: that anger works. It is an effective means to solve problems, or to get what you want, or to keep people away. Might makes right. Only the strong survive.
Throughout my childhood, adolescence, and even into my twenties, I lived by these codes. The weird part is that they worked – sort of. I have shared many of the joys and challenges of growing up in a small town. Most of the people in that town seemed angry, but I did not really see that at the time. The primary industry in the town was a paper mill, now shut down. The angry energy that pervaded the town during my childhood was most likely one of fear, or jealousy, or a sense that life could have been more. Each year, the paper mill workers were threatened with layoffs and firings and the chance of relocations to other mills around the country. It is interesting to me now that this is the “new normal” for most people, but at that time it was not – the plan was still to get a job and stay at that job with the chance of some advancement until retirement. In any case, the mill workers lived in a constant state of anxiety and fear, wondering when the rug would be pulled out from under them. This fearful energy trickled down from generation to generation, and was brought into the homes and families of the majority of townspeople.
Surprisingly, my family did not work at the mill. Well, most of them didn’t. There was a rumor going around that my grandfather had been at the mill but had gotten fired, or quit, after becoming frustrated with a poorly working dump truck that was meant to haul wood pulp from the mill and had purposely buried the thing under the conveyer that filled trucks with the pulp. The rumor was that he had completely buried the truck under hundreds of pounds of wood pulp and simply walked off the job and went home. He never confirmed or denied this rumor, but it certainly seemed within his nature. He did not work well, or play well, with others, and I believe his decision to start a business of his own was directly related to this lack of social graces.
And my grandfather’s story did not seem the exception in my home town – it was more like the norm. Angry men were respected, and admired, and looked up to. As I survey the current landscape of male role models, I don’t see that the “angry hero” is confined to small mill towns, nor has the image changed much in our society over time. Boys can buy somewhat cooler guns and weapons, and the video games certainly have come a long way in promoting the joys and productive nature of anger as it relates to killing and violence in the game world. But even with all the new technology, the messages are the same – part of “being a man” is having a good supply of anger on hand at any moment – just in case you need to turn green, bust out of your clothes, and throw some heavy things around at the bad guys. “Don’t get us angry, you won’t like us when we’re angry!”
Besides the male messages surrounding this issue, there are also cultural views of the value of a good angry attitude. I was never as struck by the differences between America and other countries as when I spent a year in England during the first Gulf War in 1990. Now remember, England was involved in the war, too – they had deployed troops and fully supported the mission of – of – well, whatever the exact mission of the first Gulf War was, they supported it. But that is not my point. My point is that the energy and tone of the average British chap was in stark contrast to that of the average American when it came to the invasion of Iraq. I spoke to many Brits about the war, and although they saw the point of the whole thing, they did not share the same blood lust, the same desire to “kick butt and take phone numbers,” as did the majority of Americans that I asked about the war. There was an air of reserve on the English island, a foreboding sense that war – all war – is costly, and painful, and can lead to more trouble than it solves. Unlike the U.S., the Brits had not strewn every building with their flags, and they did not produce baseball hats and bumper stickers with targets of Saddam Hussein on them, and the headlines in the paper never gloated about how well things were going and how easy it was to invade Iraq, and how many of the evil enemy we had killed on that day. Things were different. There was a hesitancy in their attitude that I can only imagine comes from being closer in years to having experienced an actual war on their soil – in their streets – at their homes. America experienced the bitter and awful taste of this later on – when September 11, 2001 came.
I am not writing this blog to criticize any actions or failure of actions by our military. The world, particularly the middle east, is a complicated and volatile and dangerous place at this point in time, and I am too voluntarily uninformed and ignorant about the issues to place any kind of judgment on what has been done or not done by our government and military. But I do have some opinions, concerns, anger, and a great deal of fear about the way our actions in foreign lands is portrayed in the media. And when I see a popular national newspaper with the headlines “Burn in Hell” under a picture of Osama Bin Laden, I wonder if the words “objective reporting” exist anywhere in any form among any of our primary sources of information. Call me stupid, but this type of reporting seems extremely inflammatory, and angry, and careless, and all too common.
And that is my main point about anger in our society – it is all too common, it is often romanticized, and glorified, and it sets expectations on many of us at a very young age. “Don’t get mad – get even”: “No Fear”, “My 5th grader beat up your honor student”. The messages about anger and what a good tool it is for getting what you want are rampant, and our kids are listening, and learning and living them.
I was 26 years old before I finally ran across the suggestion that anger was not a great way to handle situations. It was in the Alcoholics Anonymous book that had been written in the 1930s. The authors of that book had the nerve to suggest that people who have made the decision to face their addictions and give up drinking should also consider that anger is an emotion reserved for others – a “luxury emotion”. They went on to talk about serenity, and peace of mind, and letting go of the need to control others and situations through anger. I didn’t understand much from my first reading of that book, and I certainly didn’t think most of it applied to me – I just had a “touch” of alcoholism, a smidge or so that would turn itself around and in time I was sure I could drink “normally”. More was to be revealed about my plight in time, but for then I chose to remain gleefully different and unique from all the other alcoholics talked about in that book. I was just waiting for the “normal” drinking reset button within myself to reset itself. So I was a bit surprised that the words about anger struck home with me. I had not had a drink in several weeks before reading the A.A. book, and I was extremely angry – all the time – at everything. I may not have related to the alcoholic information yet, but I could not deny the rageaholic, because he was getting stronger without alcohol.
The truth was that I had carried most of that anger around from a very young age. I’m not really sure of all the causes, and I’ve stopped trying to figure it out. It was in me and around me and eventually it became me. It grew, and got stronger, and fed upon itself as I went through my teenage years. I was, in fact, quite proud of my anger. I had accomplished many things with it: captain of the football team, a large social network, a girlfriend, and, of course, alcohol. I was cool. I was in. And I had no fear. Well, maybe just a little. But I would never, ever, let it show. Alcohol took the fear. It buried it. It floated further away from me with each drink. And I was, at least in my own mind, a very pleasant fellow when I drank. Some years after I quit drinking, an old friend summed up my inebriated attitudes differently. He said: “Whenever you would show up, we knew that you would either drink until you quietly passed out, or drink until you got violent – and then pass out.” That was an interesting summary for me to hear.
Eventually, I learned that anger does not work so well for me – with or without an alcohol chaser. It is costly, and messy, and it makes me feel like I am heading back to the behaviors that kept me sick and unhappy for years. It is hard – harder than not drinking in many ways. So many justifiable reasons to hold a grudge – to gossip – to tell someone off “old school” style. And yet, virtually all long standing self help philosophies share the thoughts that I discovered at age 26: beware of anger. There is something universal, and timeless, and intriguingly difficult about giving up anger once and for all. But it is a goal worth working towards.
I’ll close with one last story that has stuck with me a long time: I have discussed the topic of anger with countless people in recovery over the years in meetings, one on one, and in anger management groups. On one such occasion, a man I had never met before walked up to me after a discussion involving anger and asked if I had a pen. I did. He then found a scrap of paper and, without saying a word, scrawled the word ANGER in large capital letters. He paused after doing this to make sure I was keeping up with him. Then he pointed to his creation, took pen in hand, and placed a large D in front of his previous word, so that now it read DANGER. He placed the pen down, patted my shoulder, winked at me, and walked off. I’ve never seen him again, but I still have that piece of paper. If I can locate it again, I might just scribble a picture of the Hulk next to his word for effect…
When I was 22 years old (more than just a few years ago), I worked as an executive secretary for a very wealthy businessowner in his 70s. After he finished yelling at me for making a careless mistake, I explained to him I was making mistakes because I was a nervous wreck being so araid of him. His comment? “That’s the way it should be!” Sometimes I think anger is not only accepted but is actually respected. He was a very prominent man. Thank you for another great, thought-provoking blog.
Brian,
Loved your blog. I am soooo happy I have a job that allows me to speak to the fact that anger is also an addiction, and can change a persons whole life if he/she accepts the challenge to change- We are both so blessed- would you not agree? Enjoy your precious weekend- see you next week.
Noreen