Anger: Part Three

Healing the Child Within

The Past Lessons:

I was born during the monsoons of 1983.  Natures way to cleanse the earth from the destruction of our past generations.  A time of renewal and growth.  The lightning crashed as if it was a new beacon of light to lead the world out of the darkness and into the era of information and enlightenment that the babies of the new century would bring.

We are the future, shaped by the past.  Two-thousand years (plus) of shit handed down to us that we hoped could change when we took our place in this strange and frightening world. Our parents had been to Vietnam, theirs Korea, Germany and beyond. They made real social change.  I was born into a better world.  Yes, the Cold War was still raging, but we had been to the moon.  We triumphed against Communism.  We were the first absolutely “free” generation.  Regan told good ole Gorby to “Tear Down *THAT* Wall” and he did!  We were freed as elementary school kids from the nuclear sirens that indoctrinated us into hiding under our desks and kissing our asses goodbye.  We were told that freedom was the wave of the future.

“Barbara Jo, make sure you are inside when the street lights come on”; was a very common phrase in my household.  My generation roamed so freely that the news had to remind our parents we existed.  The local media would come on the *idiot box* every night, “It’s 10:00 pm, do you know where your children are?”  I suppose only an idiot would need a reminder that they had children, was my first thought when I heard this insane reminder to those who bore us.  I remember never wanting to be part of a society that forgot about the innocent lives they created.

The fear we had as children seemed lurking in the shadows of our own minds.  We would plays games that mocked our religious, middle-class upbringing.  We questioned why we needed parents, because we are latch-key kids, who roamed about and took care of ourselves.  We didn’t need anyone.  We just needed to connect.

The struggles of the realities we wanted to escape from became like a cricket chirping in the back of our minds.  Our elders voices reminding us to “mind our manners” and “find something you love to do, then find a way to get paid for it”, rang in our heads.

This engrained a certain moral compass.  We find things we love and then capitalize on them.  This was the way to success.

The anger I carried with me from my millennial upbringing had to do with the need to be so independent at such a young age.  The anger stemmed from watching another generation fall to the same woes and pains of the past, whilst preaching to me to never do the same.

I loved to learn, teach, dance, read and be free…but so did my parents and they weren’t getting paid for it.  Quite the opposite.  It seemed like struggle was the way to be able to someday do what you enjoyed.  Not my generation.  We would not make the same mistakes that we feared when we came indoors.

Life’s Little Lessons:

The new millennium was here.  Y2K!  My generations time to leave the parental homes and make some real change.  We no longer had to sit up straight and clear our plates.  Green Day, Blink 182 and Rob Zombie dictated us.  To hell with the 1900’s and all of the pain they brought.  Sure, the old business folks thought their computers would crash, but we knew how to survive without computers and build new ones.  We used science, civics, history and pure adolescent stupidity to shape our futures.  We had the bull by the fucking horns, for a year!

“Afghanistan, Bananastan”…the rhymes that started the songs we used to sing about as kids still haunt me.

We thought we had the bull by the fucking horns.  Our generation would not suffer the same pains of war that our previous generations had.  Until one day, when my generation was thrust into a war we didn’t ask to be part of.

My college campus was locked down after the terrorist attack the world now remembers as “9/11”.  The day that ripped the magic carpet out from under my generations feet and sent us into the same fate as our elders.

The multiple tours, endless wars, corporate scandals and political unrest of our past was now our present.  So many fears from our youth followed us into our twenties and thirties.  The ghosts still haunt us.  The shell shock that was felt throughout humanity has remained within our DNA.

We learned the lessons on our own because we either didn’t want to hear them or we couldn’t because we were too busy.  We feared the present, so looking to the future became bleak.  We forgot the lessons we had once learned in life, stopped evolving and resorted to the past once again for our answers.

We began to re-code ourselves with the lessons of anger, fear and struggle that our life had become.  We craved what our parents told us was obtainable.  The house, the family, the career…but we were given war, famine and disease.

I watched myself and my generation’s light fade out.  I saw the fear and anger in not only my own eyes, but in the eyes of my peers.  The lessons we learned, the crickets in our head began to chirp louder.

“Stand up straight”…so we did.

“Pull it up by the bootstraps”…and we did.

“Do as I say, not as I do”…we were confused.

These were the lessons that we heard, but not the lessons we should have been taught.

The lessons we needed to be taught were the same lessons every generation must learn.   They are the lessons every human must find in their own life.

We don’t have to learn alone.  My generation excelled at connection and gave us the access we need to solve the problems of the generations of the past.

Let’s look back at Anger Part Three and how we used David Nixon’s example of the “playful resistor” to walk through how we can view these lessons as we evolve and mature into the brilliant elders we have now become.

https://substack.com/@driftwoodstudiosmcr/p-149803225

1. “Don’t grow up”: Wisdom is intelligence. If we don’t listen, ask questions or experience things we typically won’t believe the experience is real.  This is human nature.  This is the reason that philosophers will forever question if the cat is alive or dead in that damn box, instead of opening the box.  The wisdom of knowing that fear breeds anger is not new to civilizations.  Several people have opened the box to check on the cat, they just don’t want you to do the same. This is why we must choose to grow as adults on our own.  It is not our parent's job to continue to raise us.  We must open that box ourselves or allow our dreams to become nightmares from a generation we don’t belong to.

2. “Don’t feel”:  If we allow ourselves to feel the pain of the wars we have still raging within the corners of our mind, we will never heal the pain and fear within us.  We must feel our emotions before we can acknowledge the behaviors behind them.  When emotions of anger pop in within our psyche it causes an eruption and we behave in ways that are negative.  Thus, creating more fear.  We then fear the emotion itself and try to numb the very key to our growth.

3. “Don’t make it”:  Those who “made it” seem like such assholes when we are amongst the struggles of life.  It doesn’t matter if our parents have or haven’t made it.  The anger and fear of losing what we have struggled so greatly to obtain  causes darkness to creep into the shadows of our minds.  This only perpetuates the darkness that is anger.

4. “Don’t be close”:  This comes from discovering that our reality is not the reality of others.  Now that we have been kicked out of the nest, built our own and learned a lesson or two, we fear losing it.  We fear people seeing the cracks from our youth will make us vulnerable to more suffering. We have been conditioned to believe that others want what we have.  It could be our goods, intellect, bodies or even emotions.   This causes us to not give it to them.  It becomes transactional.  Emotions aren’t a barter system.  If I cry because I perceived your actions as cruel that is not weakness in me, that is a lack of emotional intelligence within you.  Letting people see behind the facade is how we remind each other of humanity, love and peace.

5. “Don’t enjoy”:  Anger, fear and pain eat away at the things we enjoy.  We once believed as a society that laughter cured disease.  War, pain and uncertainty have sculpted us into feeling guilty if we don’t acknowledge the suffering.  Good behaviors outweigh negative behaviors.  We need that rush of joy in order to be able to be the light in our own darkness.  The disappointment doesn’t come when we are in the throws of joy; it comes when we are struggling to enjoy life again.

How To Begin to Ease the Anger:

Remember the days when we were outside, not caring about the dishes we had to do when the street lights came on?    I spent them dancing in the alleys of America to Paula Abdul, Alanis Morrisette and The Wallflowers.  I, also, spent a good majority of my childhood in hospitals and clinics.  I have watched my friends die in front of me.  I have seen the ghosts of the men I used to love return from wars they didn’t ask to be in.  I have worked on healing my own anger, fear and pain.  I can tell you it can be done.  It is not easy and takes a lifetime.

Step One:  Love.  It is that easy.  Start with loving yourself.  We were conditioned that the most important words we will ever speak are, “I love you”.  I was brought up that the words, “I hate you” will always destroy an “I love you”.  I spent the past 40 years hating myself and the decisions I had made.  I thought I had loved everyone in my life.  I had not.  I had to start with myself.  I tell myself daily those important words, “I love you”.  I say them when I make mistakes, I say those words not only to myself, but to those I surround myself with.  I refuse to surround myself with those who cause me to feel inadequate, fear or pain.  I lead with love of myself, so that I can be the light in the darkness for others.

Step Two:  Laugh.  The antidote to anger is laughter.  This is why comedy has moved generations.  This is why you remember Chris Farley, an alumni of my alma mater; John Belushi, also an alumni of my alma mater; and George Carlin.  They reminded us to laugh during some of the darkest times in their lives and ours.  Try this the next time you feel fear of the future or angry over the everyday inconveniences of life.  Think back to a story that wasn’t funny at the time, but is now.

Step Three:  Learn.  Never stop learning.  Human behavior can be changed.  We learn new techniques every single day.  Humans can evolve within a single generation.  It is truly amazing.  I was brought up to be a well-rounded individual.  This meant often listening to opinions and facts that I didn’t like.  Hell, some caused my own anger to boil over and self-sabotage a lot of my life.  The neat thing is, I learned.  I learned that I will always make mistakes.  I will always do things I am embarrassed about.  I learned, so does everyone else.  I learned to cut myself some slack.  I have learned that not repeating the behaviors that caused pain is how I apologize.  I learned to hold others as accountable as I hold myself.  I learned that I am not done learning.

None of us have all of the answers and none of us ever have.  That cat may jump into another box that we have not even found yet.  We know we will end up in other wars.  We know that we can’t get along with everyone.  We know that people will betray us.  We know that we will betray ourselves.  The anger arises when we stop learning to shine a light on the corners of ourselves that we fear.  Those dark shadows that have driven us throughout generations.

I think of the crickets that remind us of the morals we are instilled with.  We hear the chirps as reminders of the pain we survived.  We now must learn from it.

Many of us have children of own now.  We see them going through the same struggles we went through and fear being helpless to guide them away from our own mistakes.  We forgot that we must guide them through their own mistakes, not those we committed ourselves in the past.

We must lead by example.  We must behave in a manner in which we want our offspring to behave in.

We cannot lie to ourselves and others about our history, the present or our future. If we want to end the anger and fear within, we must laugh, play, enjoy the earth and love.

We must be reminded that the ghosts of our pasts only haunt us because we aren’t learning from them.  We have learned that fear, anger and hate are the ways to move nations.  This has caused us to adopt the same standards within our own constitutions.

Be the change within yourself and your reality will become lighter.  You will become that beacon of light that guides others towards shelter during the storm.

Laugh, love and learn.  Learn why others are angry.  Learn what behaviors are instilling the fear and anger within.  Then, go laugh and love.

Life is about balance.  We can struggle one day and the next could be the day we find the love that reignites the fire within.  Remember that adults still play.  Remember that love can heal hate.  It just takes time for the light of love to thaw the coldness of hatred, fear and anger.

Thank you for being part of this collaboration between David Nixon and myself.  Please subscribe to David Nixon for more of his brilliant work.