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Today's
Meditation:
Sometimes I get angry. It used to be that I
thought the best thing to do was express my anger--after
all, that was being honest, right? But as time went
on, I started to recognize patterns in other people's
responses to me, and they weren't positive. People
would become defensive, they would become angry
themselves, and things pretty much never improved because
of my desire to be honest with my anger.
And then someone taught me the strength in waiting to
express my anger. The most beautiful result of this
new strategy that I learned quickly was that as I waited,
my anger would actually diminish. Instead of
expressing my anger immediately, when I waited I found
that I wasn't really angry at all. When I let time
go by, the anger would evaporate and I would find myself
much more interested in resolving any problems rather than
letting people know that I was angry and what made me
angry.
When we can separate ourselves from the things that make
us angry, the things that trigger our tempers, then we can
allow things to sink in and we can find a sense of
balance. When we separate ourselves from the
situations, we find ourselves seeing other people's
perspectives, understanding their actions, and feeling
more interested in finding resolution than in being angry.
A long walk can help us to relax, and from a relaxed
perspective, things don't seem nearly as drastic.
It's a great way to pull ourselves out of the
immediacy of a situation--without running away from
it--and allowing our tempers to calm so that we don't end
up doing or saying something really dumb. I've done
enough dumb things in life because of my temper, and I
really don't want or need to do any more. A walk is
a much better alternative.
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