I’d been thinking about unhelpful anger and couldn’t get my thoughts to gel.
Here’s the problem. Some anger is good, and events provoke it almost daily. How, when simply reading or viewing the news summons righteous anger, could I find the mind space to ponder unhelpful anger?
I even wrote a draft presenting bad traffic as a metaphor for the futility of unhelpful anger.
Then came more news – and more righteous anger. My draft seemed naïve. I deleted it.
You’re usually spared this glimpse inside the paragraphs factory, where clumsy thoughts are wrangled from messiness into tidiness. Today, behold the mess.
I’ve come to this thought, and perhaps it’s helpful. There are three kinds of anger:
Bad anger, like I experience in traffic jams. I seethe, and my seething doesn’t speed me along. Unhelpful and unhealthy.
Mad anger, as with alarming news, growing anguish and OMG! on steroids. Mad anger is justified and motivating. We need it.
Cheerful anger is for the marathon. It’s the fuel to sustain us after the mad anger inevitably dims. We really need cheerful anger.
As Paul wrote in Ephesians: Be angry but don’t sin. So if someone points a car in your direction, yell and scream and pound the hood. But don’t make it worse. I guess that’s Bad Anger all the way around.
Well said, Steve.