A Short Fuse

There are some days that just can't feel any worse; a time where you're on the brink of a breaking point. Your heart is stirring and you're ready to lose it. Perhaps on a better day you can take it, hold yourself back but today is not that day. Well what do you do then? Because when we're stuck in an irrational mind and we won't even come close to stopping to think about what we're going to do, how can we save ourselves from doing something that we'll regret. Anger is the worst form of intoxication. Stronger than any drug and a greater hindrance to the mind than any other depressant; anger brings out the worst in us. There are those that commit murderous crimes that they would not have committed if they were not angry. Some say hurtful words that they can never take back. Anger sometimes may bring out something in ourselves that we didn't know we had. Revenge can only come from suffering a misdeed, blood first drawn from another. Yet there is nothing we can do to stop our feeling of anger once it takes over. Sometimes there is that little voice in our head that tells us to do the right thing. But sometimes, that isn't enough.

Sure you must cultivate a good temper, so you don't get angry easily, but sometimes even the most controlled and tolerant can still break.

I've felt it personally. That anger that just tightens your heart. You feel it, it's one of the causes of heart attacks, high blood pressure and stroke. Your body actually contracts its arteries, your muscles tighten and so do you in the mind. There's almost nothing you can do once you've broken and delved straight into anger. Your mind is intoxicated to the point where I'm sure you have no control over yourself anymore, only once the anger breaks away - after the crime's been committed, you break down. You finally realise the repercussions of what you have done and what you have just become. See there's no way to save yourself from anger; in rare cases someone might save you or some divine revelation brings you back. However you can't count on that to happen. The only way to fight anger is before you lose to it. When you're standing on thin ice, you have to make the right choice.

What has made you angry? Sometimes we can handle the anger better when we look at what has made us that way. Our current mood may have escalated and insignificant issue and we may have been able to put it aside it easily if we were in a good one.

What do you want to feel? Do you want to be angry? Do you want to let it out? Often we can see that we're angry for the wrong reasons or we know who we want to be. We look at who we want to be - someone who isn't easily angered, someone who doesn't want to lose it, someone who is reasonable and calm. Then when we see that we'll lose all that we aspire to be, perhaps we'll turn back.

Where are you directing your anger towards? Maybe you've suddenly have the urge to physically express your anger by socking someone in the face. Maybe you want to let out words sharper than any knives and stab straight for the heart. Maybe you want to ruin someone else's world. See the problem is that we're giving someone else our anger when our anger is our own. No one deserves to die or to take on the overbearing weight of another one's anger and no one should ever give it for someone to bear. The fight with anger is that of your own; are you going to be assertive or are you going to be unreasonable (which is possibly the thing of someone else that has angered you in the first place).

Patience is our greatest weapon in the war against ourselves. It is an essential key to self control and will give us the calm to do what's right when we feel like we're boiling in rage. If you feel you need to let it out, go for a walk, write about something, close your eyes and breathe. Do something that doesn't involve anyone else because tolerance is only to do with ourselves and we make the right decision - to cool off rather than to lose to anger. The fight is not easily won but with practice and patience it is. We preserve what we want to be because anger does not change us. You can always choose to be better because inside you are, everyone is. A choice just has to be made. No one is born angry; anger is given to us but not a part of us; we can just throw it away.