Anger...

Yesterday was very cool. I mean, in most respects it was very ordinary. The special and cool part about it was…it was 18 days till my 18th birthday, which is on the 18th of August. I also celebrated when it was 18:18 o’clock (military time, you know). It was a very cool day, and it will never be that day ever again in my entire life. However, it would have been cooler if I had been born on the 8th of August, because then, ten years ago (oh-my-gosh…) today would have been 8 days till my 8th birthday on the 8th of the 8th month, at 8:08 am AND pm!!! Alas, ‘twas not so.

So Elizabeth pointed out one of the questions on the survey and how I answered it. “Who was the last person you were mad at”, or something to that effect. I answered, “EVERYBODY!!!”

But I kind of got to thinking (you see, I do that sometimes). There are lots of emotions that make us blind. I guess we are very shortsighted people. When we’re in love, we’re blind…we can’t see how this certain person could be bad, we don’t see how anyone else but that person could be good enough, and we don’t see how we ever loved anyone else, or didn’t love that certain person before. Happiness is blind, because we don’t understand how things could have ever been so bad. We know they were, but it seems like it wasn’t such a big deal or something. Anger is blind, because all we can see is the problem right in front of us, and how terrible it is. Even apathy is blind…how could you have ever allowed yourself to FEEL FEELINGS??? How STUPID could you have been? So now I just don’t feel like CARING about ANYTHING right now…well, that’s how my apathy is, and from there I go on to not allowing myself to get happy or sad or angry or do anything…and then I just crawl into bed and sleep a bit. Have you ever noticed people’s “Morning Faces”? I think I really first discovered this while camping. Everyone has this face they wake up with in the morning. It’s all groggy-wrinkly-stuck, if that makes any sense. It feels that way, too. And coffee magically makes it fade away! I wonder at these things…what a phenomenon we have right in front of us.

The reason I said “everybody” was kind of an elbow in the side to human nature, I suppose. When one is angry, one tends to blame everyone else but oneself. It starts when we’re little. I guess some people are less selfish than others, just as some people are more school smart than others, or some girls are more prissy than others. I do try to be a nice person, and I try to be responsible and notice that it’s my fault if something terrible has happened to me. Sometimes it’s really not, of course. But it’s just like the guy whose truck my aunt accidentally ran into the back of – it was my aunt’s fault, but he was so incredibly nice and forgiving, even offering for her to drive his pickup (which hadn’t really been hurt by her little Reatta) while she got her car fixed or acquired a new one. I want to be like that.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Pietro Aretino says in a letter to Girolamo Quirini, “Angry men are blind and foolish, for reason at such a time takes flight and, in her absence, wrath plunders all the riches of the intellect, while the judgment remains the prisoner of its own pride (translation by Samuel Putnam).” Yeah…16th century Spanish/Italian stuff or something, but you know what I mean, I think. Though I like this next one better: “I know of no more disagreeable situation than to be left feeling generally angry without anybody in particular to be angry at.” -- Frank Moore Colby.

I don’t remember or maybe I don’t even know what I was really going to say. I think I had one of those “MLA research paper”-type-blog-entries mapped out in some corner of my brain, but now it’s stuck there (I must have been staring longingly at all the bubble gum at the store too long), and I cannot bring it forward into my “line of thinking”, if you know what I mean. If you all have anything to add about whatever I’ve been trying to formulate, feel free to!

--Jessica