Rage

“Even raw and messy emotions are a form of light, crackling, bursting with energy. We can use that light of rage in a positive way, in order to see into places we cannot usually see.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

You can learn a lot from your anger. Most people just use it to think of a way to get back at someone who has hurt them. It fuels their thinking that something is wrong with the other person. It tells them that they don’t like the other person at the moment, and that they want to hurt them in the same way that they have hurt us. But anger can be used more constructively that that.

Anger can be used to show you something about yourself that you had chosen not to see before. It could show you how quick you are to judge a situation in which another person is not doing what you want them to do not because they are purposely being mean to you but are simply thinking about something else, or even because they misunderstood what you wanted.

A favorite story illustrating this is the one about two people who agreed to meet at the statue in the park. Each one sat for hours waiting for the other and growing angrier all the time. The next day they talked to each other and realized that there were actually two statues in the park and each person waited at a different statue. There was just a misunderstanding about where to wait. How often does this kind of situation happen in your life?

Your anger can also be used to show you what you really value and what your goals in life really are. Most people don’t stop to think about WHY they are angry; they just figure the important thing is that they are angry and that it is the other person’s fault. The truth is that it is not about the other person at all, your emotions come from your own interpretation of what the other person has done. Once you realize what this interpretation is, then you can change it to something more closer to the truth. Use the light of rage in this positive way.