Stepping into the Next Spotlight

I have been very angry recently.

My therapist says this is a good thing, that being angry is an essential part of the human condition. I argue that it violates logic and reason. He agrees. I argue that it violates my spiritual philosophy. He agrees. "Not very spiritual," he says. "Ridiculous even. But necessary nonetheless."

I agree with this even if I don't understand it. After all, I just finished forcing someone I care very much about into a position where the only thing he could do was hurt me, and I did it just so I could work up a fit of righteous indignation against him. So he hurt me, just like I knew he would, and it did hurt, hurt bad. And then the pain burned into fury, incandescent. Bright. I rode that for a while, took energy from it. And then the next day it all melted into embarrassment, finally coagulating into this soggy lump of guilt. I am now looking back on the whole episode with puzzled quiet sadness.

But that fury part sure felt good. Oh how violent and right it felt, like moonshine going down.

I can't imagine Jesus doing this. But then I remember how he went ballistic in the temple, knocking over stalls, yelling at merchants, probably sending small children and chickens scurrying for cover. I imagine he muttered hot bad words, maybe even kicked things.

It's a comfort, this.

Of course anger accomplishes nothing. It's just pain made manifest and hurled at the world, or at one specific part of the world. But you can learn from it. Anger empties. It takes the pain and directs it outward, unlike hurt, which turns it inward. True anger is clean. It keeps us dynamic, takes us out of ourselves and our pain. Eventually we see clearly again. And then we act. And that is why anger is necessary. But it only works if we keep it in motion. Kept inside, it just mutates into hurt again, like a cancer, and begins to eat away at the center of things.

I forgot the motion part of anger. I saw it as something that needed tamping, so I stamped around it very virtuously, tried to put it out it with love and patience and hope and -- and this is the unfortunate part -- this niggly sense of duty, like a Girl Scout going for her enlightenment badge. I grieved, yes, with an intensity that took me to my knees some days, literally. But I tried to cool the anger, since I'd heard so often that anger is a coverup for a more authentic emotion, and I wanted to get to that so that I could move on with this letting go business. I wanted to get to the next phase, since this one didn't seem very Buddha-like. It was like being told that you had to be Denis Leary before you could be Ghandi.

Which, I guess, is true.

Anne Lamott describes it as being in darkness and seeing one spot of illumination just beyond your feet, a circle of light into which you can step. So you do. And it disappears. And then another appears, just ahead. "We in our faith work," her pastor Veronica says, "stumble along toward where we think we're supposed to go. bumbling along, and here is what's so amazing -- we end up getting exactly where we're supposed to be." (from "Mountain Birthday" in Traveling Mercies)

I thought I could get there from here, on my own. It didn't work. I could only get there from there. Anger was the next spotlight, and once I stepped into it, it disappeared. And now I can just see the glow of some new circle, right at the corner of my eye, right at the edge of my peripheral vision.