What are you really angry about?

Seeing red?

I’m still here cross-legged on the mat, pondering. The weekend’s large helping of Om has still not worn off, or at least my coat still smells faintly of incense.

Clearly too much gazing at one’s navel is not a good thing. Especially if it means children go unfed and husbands un-husbanded. However, a little glimpse in your mental mirror can be quite revealing. 

For instance, are you sure your emotional reactions are entirely in response to what you think they are in response to? 

Those of you rolling your eyes and muttering about it being ‘one of those’ posts, can push off now. Or sit still and listen, you may learn something. Yes, you. You know who I’m looking at. 

Anger is a good example. Are you really angry that the post office queue is nine people long on the day you need to get your car tax renewed having left it too late to do online? Is your fury at being betrayed by your ambitious young hairdresser who has moved to a new salon actually in proportion? Does the burning rage you feel at getting a parking ticket ever seem slightly over the top? Hmm… 

It is possible that you might still be cross about something that happened ages ago. Maybe you were overlooked for the football team, humiliated by a teacher or betrayed by someone you trusted and you haven’t had a proper chance to deal with it. 

I was pretty cross after I discovered that my first husband was, actually, homosexual and had been all along. Not as easy to spot as you might think. This was something of a betrayal and involved – while no actual verbal lies – a reasonably colossal deceit. Consequently I’m rather keen on the truth and inclined to get a bit miffed if I think someone is lying to me. Now that doesn’t need to be a huge “trust me, I’m a Nigerian heiress and I have some money for you” kind of lie, just something that I had believed for a while. Thus, a minor promise like “I’ll put the bins out/tax the car/book the hotel” which gets broken through domestic amnesia feels like a lie and gives me the rage. 

Interesting observation, don’t you’d think? Yes. And you have no idea how happy I feel knowing why I’m quite as cross as I am.

I’m not suggesting we can use long faded slights in the playground as an excuse for whole range of unnecessary grumpiness, just that sometimes it’s nice to work out what’s really going on.