In Others’ Words: The Anger Remedy

 

The other night I decided to enter into a controversial debate . . . a conversation on Facebook, something I just don’t do. I wrote out my comment, editing it here and there, and then read it out loud to my husband Rob and my sixteen-year-old daughter, CJ.

Here’s how the conversation went afterward:

CJ: Can I say something?

Me: Sure.

CJ: You’ve told us if we’re angry about something, we should sleep on it and then decide the next day if we what we’d planned on saying is what we still want to say. 

Me: Silence.

CJ: And you sound like you’re angry, so maybe you should sleep on it . . .?

Rob (nicely) agreed with her.

We talked some more and here’s what I decided: It’s not about me being right or wrong in an argument or debate or “heated conversation” — call it what you will. Who is right and wrong will always change. The one thing I do know is that I don’t want to be an angry person.  Now that — being angry or not —  is a choice I can make every day, minute by minute. 

Rob and CJ and I talked for a while about caring more about not being angry than about being right. I thought of Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch watchmaker who, along with her family, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during WW11 — and who was sent to a concentration camp because of her actions. She must have chosen to let go of her anger over and over again. How else could she have forgiven one of the concentration camp guards when, years after the war, he asked for her forgiveness?

Stepping away from anger is a choice — and sometimes it starts by delaying it.

In Others’ Words: When has delaying saying something or doing something released you from anger?