Why is anger an emotion often loathed?
Isn’t it a very human feeling?
Part of the package of all the feelings we were born with?
Feelings like hurt, jealousy, love, happiness, sorrow, fear, reflectiveness, etc.
I can really, really get angry with the inconsequence of people.
Their double standards.
Yet, that is not all.
There’s more to anger than this.
Do I like being angry?
No, I don’t.
That’s the wrong question.
The right question would be:
“Is it appropriate, is it adequate, that I am angry now?”
And it of course is!
Otherwise I wouldn’t be angry.
That’s the logic of this feeling.
Anger has nothing to do with hurt feelings.
You don’t feel angry when you feel hurt.
Because then you feel hurt.
You don’t feel angry when you feel jealous.
Because then jealousy is the owner of your feelings.
No, in reality anger is the sensation you feel when you are not being respected.
Not being taken seriously,
but rather being played around with.
I always feel anger crawling up to my heart
— turning itself around it to finally captivate my whole inner life —,
once I start to realize that people are manipulating me.
That they misuse and abuse me.
Emotionally blackmail me.
That they use hidden and dishonest tactics,
just to make me do what they want me to do.
Or because they are incapable of dealing with their own feebleness?
Their own weakness?
Their own fragility?
In exactly those situations my anger is my friend.
‘Cause it’s a signpost.
A warning.
And also a signal of my strength.
At those moments it comes down to me.
To the way how I deal with those situations.
To my attitude and my decision on how to respond to that feeling of anger.
Just as fear is a sign for the lack of freedom and yet at the same time it signals the way to freedom,
anger signals the possibility of a decision.
The possibility of reaching an authentic decision.
The possibility of decisively taking responsibility for my life.
The possibility of fighting against inauthenticity.
Anger seperates.
Just as fear does.
Separation and distance are needed in order to be able see who I really am.
It’s all about the priority of the special above the universal.
It’s all about what Søren Kierkegaard calls the teleological suspension of the ethical.
From the perspective of the conventional morality, I shouldn’t be angry.
Yet from the perspective of my real and pure authenticity,
it’s the only thing I can and have to be right now.
My anger is an authentic feeling.
And the turning point can only come if and when I answer to my anger.
When my response is the right, real and adequate deed that truly follows up on that feeling.
And specifically: when I respond without being brought to a halt by my feelings of angst.
Angst is a prerequisite for cowardice.
But it’s also a prerequisite for courage.
And anger can fuel that courage.
