And Why I Love Being Angry

This is a story of anger. And junk food. And a breath well taken.

The year is 2020 and I’m pissed. I’ll admit that upfront. I’ve been stewing about something that happened, oh, going on eight years ago now.

These days, it feels as though I’m holding my sanity together with packing tape and paperclips…and a thin thread of optimism.

But let’s shove that under the carpet for now and get to the good part of the story.

Here I am, trolling the grocery store aisles, chomping on my resentments, when I seize upon a family-sized bag of Wavy Lays potato chips like it’s emotional first aid. Add ranch dip and a Diet Coke, and maybe the world will feel a little less jumbled.

But when the teenager at the checkout stand botches the bagging of my groceries I. Am. Not. Okay.

The Kleenex boxes are perched on top of the willy-nilly tuna cans, which were thrown in on top of the artichokes, and the whole thing resembles a lopsided game of Jenga. Hence, the potato chips, without a safe place to nestle, keep falling out of the bag.

I dock my shopping cart a few feet away, close enough to show these idiots how groceries should be bagged.

As hard as I try, however, I’m making the whole situation worse. By now, I have HAD. IT. And I shove the chips, with reckless disregard, into the shopping bag.

And that’s when the Wavy Lays explode—loud as a gunshot, echoing through the check out stands, through the frozen foods to the bakery.

And the chips go flying.

Now I’m mortified. I must cling to my anger, though, to fend off humiliation. At this point, I have a few choices:

  1. Calmly apologize and clean up the mess
  2. Sit on the floor and cry
  3. Charge out of the store with my head down

You can guess which choice I make. Really though, it feels as though the choice was made for me, long ago, by the same discontent that has been spinning my mind into knots for almost a decade.

Here’s a truth: I love being angry. It’s juicy. Even as anger thrashes its way through the pastoral fields of my brain, crushing everything in sight, I savor the heat of it.

Anger is a tricky thing, though. It has a way of feeding on itself, stoking itself into full-on rage…and believe me, nobody wants to be in my fallout zone.

Here’s another truth: I tend to be a pretty cheerful person. I was born with an attitude of optimistic smiley-hood. It’s how I navigate life and cope with a world that often baffles me.

I do wonder, sometimes, if all the goofy lightheartedness is not just another mask, a turn of personality, interchangeable with self-righteous indignation, tenderness, and serious intention. Among a dozen others.

This I know: Underneath it all, a volcano of fury roils.

So now you understand: It could be no other way. In the split second it takes me to recover from the surprise of the explosion, my mind is decided.

I put my head down, pretend it didn’t happen, and barrel to the exit as fast as my remaining dignity will allow. And yes, I’m leaving a trail of broken potato chips in my wake.

And what do I find when I finally get outside? I’ve walked out the wrong door.

My car is parked on the opposite side of the building—as far as possible away from where I’m standing. So now I’m trailing potato chips outside.

At this point, humiliation has elbowed rage clean out of the way. And I’m ashamed of myself. How did I get this ridiculous?

I do have tools:

1. Meditation: If I start the day with stillness and breath, I can stay in the eye of the storms. I defer to the metta bhavana—practicing loving-kindness, benevolence, and wishing others well.

2. Surrender: There are things I can’t change in life: the weather, men, interest rates, crappy baggers, bad drivers. But I can choose how I react.

3. Detachment: If I can watch myself from a distance, like a character in a movie, my emotions won’t run amuck like a toddler with a kazoo. Witnessing invites compassion, forgiveness, and letting go.

But meditation, surrender, and detachment are all on vacation in Hawaii at the moment. Indignation and Resentment, on the other hand, are familiar and reliable friends.

Along with their first-cousin, Blame, they are always close at hand, spring-loaded to pounce whenever I’ve been hoarding things I don’t want to offer—like feelings, like asking for what I want, like forgiveness and grace.

These things don’t come easy for me. But they’re in there, somewhere, under the things that are under the carpet.

Standing there, staring at the wreckage – chips, dignity, one lilting box of Kleenex – it hits me: This was never about the grocery bagger or the chips. It never is.

Anger doesn’t happen to me. I carry it with me.

This episode crash-landed in my day so that I can no longer ignore the fact that I’m already past my limit and something is really wrong.

So right there in the parking lot, I let it out—quietly this time.

Not in a boom.
But in a breath.
Steady, full, mine.

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