Tag: anger

Banana bread

Mariangela Maguire1 Comment

As we stay home to stay safe, many of us have done a lot of baking. That was my plan on Monday afternoon. Banana bread—I follow a good recipe but I just want to say a little cardamom and a little ground ginger give it a deeper, richer flavor. I went to cupboard and pulled out the flour and sugar, each in a clear plastic canister. I looked at the flour and wondered if I had enough. So holding the canister slightly above eye level I gave it a good shake and soon the left side of me was covered in the half wheat half white combo that I like so much and a large mound of it had settled at my feet.

I’m confident I would have won $10,000 from America’s Funniest Home Videos if anyone had been around to record the moment. But I wasn’t laughing just then. As I stood there I felt tears in my eyes, I felt tension in my chest, I felt heat throughout my body. My first thought was a curse word. My second was a question. Who failed to close the canister lid tightly? Alone in the house there was no one to yell at or to help me clean up the mess. That was a good thing because it gave me time to stand still. And that was a good thing because I needed to figure out how to move without making the mess worse and because I wasn’t just feeling the rise of anger within me, I was watching it and being curious about it. This is not an argument against anger. It has an important role to play in our lives. But in this situation, although I felt it, I also wondered what purpose it could serve.

A lot of different thoughts went through my mind as I watched myself reacting. I thought about how much I wanted the unclosed lid to be my partner’s fault. I wanted to blame someone other than me. And I thought about being a kid. My siblings and I had one mantra: Don’t tell mom. Because no one ever wanted to be to blame for whatever inappropriate thing was going on. I noticed that I felt defeated—now I didn’t have enough flour to make banana bread (and judging by the amount on the floor, and on me, there had been plenty). But going to store is no longer and easy proposition and once I get there, flour isn’t always available. I felt wasteful and careless—two cardinal sins in my family. Observing all the tentacles of my reaction to this trivial mistake, I realized that the feeling of defeat was the one most likely to linger. This is a habit of mind that is absolutely central for me. Suddenly I saw myself giving up on the afternoon. Throwing myself into a chair, cursing and grumbling, overwhelmed by that familiar feeling that I can’t do anything right.

I saw it. I recognized it. I didn’t stuff it down. I didn’t berate myself for its existence and as I watched it, its hold on me started to loosen. I cleaned up the mess. I left the banana bread project for another day. I saw that I could be happy despite not being perfect and so I was. Not as happy as I might have been with a fresh loaf of homemade banana bread but enough to not poison the atmosphere of my mind and my home.

Bag of rocks

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In a lovely coincidence this happened on Independence Day. After a quick run to the store my partner and I cruised the local car dealerships since we could do so without being approached by salespeople. I drove up and down the aisles and she jumped out here and there to check sticker prices. At one point, as we chatted away, I paused mid-thought, and she filled in the rest. I hate this. Normally, I’d let out an exasperated sigh or snap, “Stop interrupting me!”* But neither of those things happened this time because a thought entered my head: “I’m not going to snap at her anymore when she does that.” And the next thing that happened was a feeling of relief, like I’d pulled a big rock out of the bag of rocks on my back and put it down. And the next thing that happened was my ego cried out in anguish, “What’s going to be left of me if I put this rock down? What about all of my other rocks? Who am I without my rocks?”

I’m not kidding. At that moment I believed that part of what makes me who I am is that I react with anger when I think my partner has interrupted me. Yes, I did laugh out loud at that thought.

I’ve regretted snapping before and promised myself to do better, be patient, learn to overlook it. But that response was inadequate as evidenced by the fact that I never stopped snapping. Those previous efforts were founded on the assumption that the story I told myself about my partner’s behavior had some foundation in reality. The story was: She never listens to me. That story fit neatly with my previous experiences (aka: bag of rocks). The youngest of six, raised in an often chaotic and noisy household, I could hardly get a word in edgewise. There are times when my partner doesn’t listen. But never listens? No, that’s empirically untrue. It turns out that every instance of her starting to speak before I finish speaking is not someone I love ignoring me or telling me to stop talking.

How is it that I finally noticed this truth? Practice. I spend a little time each day reading something, sometimes just a couple of pages, that challenges me to pay attention to how my mind works. And, my meditation practice is getting stronger. In recent days I’ve been asking myself, when uncomfortable feelings arise, “Am I going to throw away my happiness in this moment over this?” I take a deep breath, I let the feelings pass through, I deal with whatever needs to be dealt with, and then I let it go.

Or to paraphrase my hero Michael Singer, I am living my life rather than living my mind.

 

What practices are you using to watch your mind at work?

What’s in your bag of rocks? Which ones are you ready to put down?

 

*Communication nerds, like me, say that overlaps and interruptions are the same thing—two people speaking simultaneously. The difference is that overlapping speech is perceived as accidental for example, when one speaker apologizes and stops speaking in order to allow the other person to continue. Overlaps can also be perceived as cooperative speech where two people, often people who are close, finish each other’s sentences. In contrast, interruptions are perceived as an effort to stop the speaker from continuing.

Piece by piece

I begin to let go of the belief that martyrdom is essential to my self-esteem.

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The community dinner I work with offers a vegetarian option at each meal and I’ve taken responsibility for choosing it, shopping for it, and preparing it. However, after taking on new responsibilities with the organization, I wanted to unload this obligation. Each year the local college assigns a student to work with us, and our current student loves to cook so I asked her if she would take over. She agreed to do it and I was SO pleased with myself for letting this responsibility go. Then life intervened. Sherry’s class schedule changed limiting her hours at the kitchen, another volunteer told me our kitchen manager wouldn’t buy some of the ingredients Sherry requested, and then she got sick before one meal and couldn’t be there at all. I nearly careened over the edge this week when the she sent me a quiche recipe, one she didn’t think she would be available to prepare, and the ingredient list seemed poor to me (pro-tip: plain yogurt is much better in quiche than heavy cream). Feeling aggravated and fed-up, I was on the verge of sending a text to the kitchen manager telling her I would go back to making the vegetarian option from now one when a tiny voice inside me said, “Stay out of it.”

I put my phone down but I struggled to quiet my mind. My impulse was to frame this situation as beyond my control and as the fault of those around me. After stewing about it I moved on to the question, “How did I end up right back in the middle of the vegetarian option?” and I see that I did it piece by piece. For instance, I’m the primary liaison between the kitchen and the college program that sends us a student. Sherry, appropriately, assumes I’m the person she should talk to about scheduling problems. I didn’t take myself out of that loop. Also, I assume, despite some counter-evidence, that the other dinner prep volunteers don’t want to take responsibility for the vegetarian option. I also assume that if they do take it on they won’t do it the way I think it should be done.

Piece by piece I give myself away. “It’s okay, I’ll do it this time.” “Yes, I’ll listen to your concerns rather than urge you to talk to the person who is the source of those concerns.” “No, I appreciate your offer but I’ll take care of it.” One decision at a time I hand pieces of myself over until I feel as if there’s nothing left of me. I tell myself as it’s happening that I’m patient and accommodating, that I put others’ or the organization’s needs before my own. I use that reasoning as evidence that I’m a good person. And when I feel as if there are no pieces of me left I am angry and blame others and I feel justified because, after all, I’ve been accommodating and patient and selfless.

As I learn to watch myself, to see my habits of thought as an object of curiosity, I gain freedom. And I learn to identify the actions that will keep me free—being direct about my limits, trusting others when they say they’ll take care of something, accepting that they won’t do things the way I would. Above all, I begin to let go of the belief that martyrdom is essential to my self-esteem.

Family politics

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My brother Jim is a smart guy and like everyone else in my family a news junkie with very strong opinions that he likes to share. Adjectives that describe this sharing might include adamant, insistent, emphatic, and loud. His style of sharing didn’t bother me until our political views started to diverge. A lot.

Initially, I was so surprised by that I either avoided the subject like the plague or said, “Uh huh, uh huh” until he ran out of gas. But inside, I felt awful for stifling myself and creating a feeling of distance between us. Then during a summer visit we were alone in his car when he started talking about politics and I found myself using the listening strategies I used to teach. Specifically, I listened to understand rather than to refute.

This was pretty helpful because it allowed me to respond in a way that affirmed him as a person without agreeing with what he was saying. I don’t agree with his point of view, but after listening to him I could honestly say I understood how he’d arrived at it. This was so much better than saying, “Uh huh, uh huh,” while thinking he was full of crap.

Another time, we were on the phone when he got going and a voice inside me said, “Go for it.” I matched him point for point. The conversation grew heated at times because political views emerge from our lived experience, our sense of how the social world impinges on and limits our lives. I heard us both identify core beliefs that have become core differences between us. In that sense there was nothing lighthearted about our exchange. I was tired at the end of it but also exhilarated. I don’t have a lot of conversations about politics with people who disagree with me and I enjoyed the mental workout. I suspect he’s in the same boat. Very few people in his life engage with him in these conversations probably because his passion often sounds like fury and overwhelms them.

Last week he sent me a youtube video, describing it as a “good history lesson.” Reasonably confident that I would not see it the same way my first impulse was to ignore it. Then I reconsidered because he matters to me. I watched it and sure enough I found the speaker’s point of view utterly ridiculous. Now what? I wrote him a message telling him my thoughts about the speaker’s argument but I’m not going to send it. What I realize is that I’m willing to engage him, my flesh and blood brother, but I’m not willing to create an exchange where we use other people’s words in an effort to educate and persuade each other. I know that if I do that, I will spend an enormous amount of mental energy arguing with him and his surrogates and that’s not acceptable to me. I’m comfortable with this boundary.

When I can do no more than listen, I listen to understand. When I have the energy to debate, I go for it. Above all, I keep my desire for an authentic relationship with him in the foreground and view him with non-judging awareness so that whatever form my engagement takes, it does not include trying to change him.

My life as a weight bearing activity

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A few mornings a week I get up, drink a cup of coffee, and watch a PBS program that claims to help us age backwards. The host who may be 90 but looks 50 takes viewers through a full-body workout in 22 minutes. She often tells us, as we lunge and squat, that we don’t need to use weights because the body itself is a weight. Sister, have you given me an apt metaphor! Although I’m not thin, the heaviest weights I carry are not physical but are the stories of the past that I bring to bear on the present.

The other day my partner came home from the gym at about 7 a.m. and said, “I can’t dawdle, I’ve got to get to work.” Immediately I felt tense, rattled, and rushed as I engaged in a very heated interior monologue about how her failure to prepare did not constitute an emergency for me. As I continued making breakfast I also thought about how much I didn’t want to feel mad at her. That gave me enough of a pause to put some distance between myself and my thoughts and feelings. When my partner came into the kitchen I was calmer and said, “Are you mad at me?” She looked deeply confused and said no. I said, “So when you said that you couldn’t dawdle, you were really talking to yourself not me.” She nodded.

My alternate title for this post was, “If only you would . . .” as in, “If only you would change seven or maybe twelve things about your interactions with me, then I could be happy and I really don’t think that’s too much to ask.” In this situation, “If only you would be more careful in your speech.” Why? Because I don’t just hear her say she’s rushing, I hear her say, “I’m rushing and you’re being too slow and if I’m late it will be your fault.” My impulse then is to blame her for my unhappiness. After I am the person to whom she appeared to be speaking. But I’m no longer satisfied with that conclusion.

As I reflected on the tension, anxiety, and anger I’d felt I had a little flashback. When I was a kid, my mom was often rushed in the mornings and her behavior looked and felt like anger toward me. It scared me. I tried to be perfect and faultless so that I wouldn’t make her angrier. As an adult, I know she wasn’t angry. She was stressed and overwhelmed.

My partner is not perfect (even she would admit that!). But neither is she the cause of either my happiness or unhappiness. She could change all of the things I think stand between me and a stress-free existence and it won’t make any difference if I continue to weigh our present down with my past.

Family treasures

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More than a hundred years ago my grandmother found the gleaming cherry bureau that now stands in my dining room. It was covered in a thick layer of red paint but she recognized the treasure that lay beneath.

My grandmother was a woman with a gift for seeing the possible. She was also a woman who raged at those around her. She died long before I was born but my mother told stories of her creativity and strength and wrath. It seems to me her fury was fueled by intellectual abilities that far exceeded her life’s limits.

The legacy of her anger is visible in my thin skin, easy sarcasm, and quickness to blame others for my pain. I saw it in my mother; I see it in my siblings. The anger inhabiting our homes is nearly as tangible as the corner cupboard, the camelback sofa, or the dining room table passed down to us over the years. But like these pieces of furniture we’ve lived with our entire lives, our anger is so deeply familiar to us that we cannot imagine our lives without it. I don’t know how to fill that corner of the dining room without the cherry bureau. I don’t know how to be in the world without my anger.

Tara Brach describes anger as an intelligent emotion. She doesn’t try to talk us out of it but instead urges us to acknowledge its presence with non-judging awareness. And then—take a pause and focus on the inner self, find the unmet need that evokes the anger. Even if the other person is as wrong as can be the anger is mine and paying attention to what’s going on inside, Brach argues, is the beginning of being able to respond with intelligence, empathy, and understanding. While Brach accepts that sometimes relationships have to end, her call to us holds real promise for deepening rather than dissolving them.

My grandmother owned a mahogany teacart and when it went out of fashion she had the wheels removed and a clean-lined table emerged. It’s in my kitchen and I sit at it to eat breakfast or read the mail. I did not know my grandmother but I am of her and I cherish the traces of her I find in the objects she transformed. I’m a catalyst for a different kind of change when I transform the inevitable experience of anger into a deeper understanding of myself and those around me.