Quick to be calm

June 6th, 2023

I get angry, of course. It doesn't have to be anything serious or immediate or truthfully affecting me, no. There are things like inconsiderate drivers affected by an elective vision and selective consideration for traffic rules. Things like people being an hour late for a meeting with me. Things like my mom getting old and showing her progressing age by having a fall in the garden. And I register those things as they happen around me, and get angry — usually very quickly and thoroughly.

But then something unusual happens. Unusual with regard to my previous years when getting angry meant staying angry for a long while, steaming inside for even longer, and then looking proactively for other things to be angry about and for ways to make justice and vengeance felt by those who dared to put me in a bad mood and caused my indignation — or for other ways to let go of anger, normally with the help of addictive substances.

For weeks now, maybe even months, that anger which still feels the same as always — dissipates quickly into a background where it becomes no more than just a hum in the back of my head. I am still aware of the reasons and causes for me being angry, but I don't feel that primal and burning rage at the same time. My emotions go back to calm detachment and partial disillusion with the surrounding issues. There is a definitive somber sadness about the lack of control, but I don't dwell upon it much. I wait for the next day with the expectation of it being a good day. No more than that — one day at a time works fine for me.