Anger Management: Revisited & Children Emotional Education

I feel the need to talk about my anger management. Subconsciously, my anger management is controlled by 3 things.

1. My respect for Mahatma Gandhi's life of pure tolerance, peace and patience.
2. Prophet Jesus's (pbuh) claimed quote of "If anyone slaps on your cheek, show him your other cheek too."

I'm not a saint. The two above only constitute less than half of what controls my anger. The 3rd thing that controls my anger is...

3. My amusement of what anger can do to a person, and how much energy and time can be wasted by just feeling angry.

In psychology, my main interest is in emotional psychology, as I've written in a previous post titled "Test". Growing up, it was very interesting to note how unscrupulous drivers can cause my mum and dad to be so affected that they only talk about how careless the driver is for at least a half hour long, while we know the driver does not even have a five second thoughts of my mum and dad. I've also seen my friend, MG chased a car who cuts right in front of him for a whole 30km just to cut that driver again. I don't see the benefit in this.

I've written also maybe two years ago that, being angry to a person is like being in love. That person takes a huge amount of your mind at that time, and energy is spent on thinking of vengeance or "what I would have done differently if I can turn back time." Frankly, sincerely, truthfully, I think I have made a great advancement on my own personal anger management. When a person gets angry at you, they want you to get angry too. We do realise that if the other person doesn't get angry, or just say "whatever", it makes you just more angry, right? I enjoy doing that, sorry to say. I don't say "whatever", but I just drop it. No sense in getting affected.

This had led to me being termed by a good friend, AS, that I have an emotional switch I can just turn on and off. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. All I know is that when someone gets angry at me, or try to provoke an anger in me, there would be an instantenous evaluation of the situation on whether it's even worth a cent in me being affected. If it doesn't, then I don't give a damn.

A simple situation is this morning whereby a cashier chided me for not telling my orders properly. So what? I just paid and left. Within two steps walking away from the counter, all thoughts of the cashier left my memory.

I just failed to realise something though. When I'm alone, I can do that. When I'm with others who knows me, that's when there is a different variable that comes into play. If my son sees me getting scolded for an honest mistake, and I walk away, what kind of impact will that create? Will that say "Oh, we must just not care about anger." or "My dad's a coward." or whatever it is.

What I know is that when someone gets angry at my loved ones in the past, yes, I get affected because my position is as a protector. But when it's directed at me alone, I just lift up my simple anti-emotion shield and move on. Surely, when people get angry at me, and my loved ones are nearby, they would feel affected, and this is one thing that I failed to realise and would now need to formulate a better 'dealing with the situation' should it arise again.

I give myself and you readers this situation. Imagine you're walking with your parents, and you tripped over a wire that a workman lays across the floor of a shopping mall, and the plug comes out of the socket. Before you could cuss (or whatever it is you do when these things happen), and find someone to blame, a workman who was drilling a small hole into the wall suddenly snaps at you. "Hoi! Blind ah?" and he proceed to walk to the plug, put it back in and as we walks back to his stairs, he gives you an angry glance. What is your reaction?

If I'm alone, yes, I'd just walk away. No sense in putting sense into someone who's already stupid enough not to tape the wire securely to the floor. Again, I'm not a saint. A saint would go to the management and tell them the danger of the wire that may trip a much elder person, etc etc. Now, besides the above, wouldn't you start getting angry and say "What blind?! You're the one who didn't secure the wire properly. What if my mother step over it??" bla bla bla, and shouting ensues, etc etc,... 10 minutes later, you fumed off, the workman continues his work in anger.

Two hours later you're still fuming. At home, the dinner table topic is about a stupid workman. Next day at work, the breakfast topic is about the stupid workman.

In the end, how does this benefit you? You traded time and energy for anger, and you didn't get a single cent from 'loving' this workman. I'd rather use my mind to think of so many other stuff than just anger to a workman.

But that's just me. I guess the new formula now would be to pretend anger and scold the person, and continue to throw anger blows at each hurtful comment, just for the fun of it. Seriously, that would be fun. Ok then, that's my new formula.