LIFESTAMPS ... lifelong lessons: ANGER WITHIN

Cooking wasn’t a chore for me, I enjoyed it. It was like a project and the outcome was always tasty. I had a nice time thrilling my friends back in school when it was time to cook. They felt I was always too prepared and took too much time to prepare a simple meal. I didn’t argue with them. I was taught so.

On this day I had cooked a nice meal and dropped it in my corner of my hostel room and was off for an appointment I can’t recall at the moment. I came back to see a note atop the covered pot. It was a note from a friend of mine who stayed few rooms down the corridor. He was reporting himself but why on my pot. I picked up the note and read it. Instantly adrenaline rushed up my fleshy case.

He had eaten my food. I took so much time to cook this meal and I never even planned to share it. Now it was not only eaten, it was eaten without permission and to compound matters a worthless note that would never serve as replacement was dropped. It only rubbed in the hurt the more.

I picked up a pen and paper and decided to reply the note. I poured out my heart and anger in that piece and when I was done, I was even more satisfied than the food could have made me. I was ready to give him the note when he returned. My roommate picked up the note and after reading he began to beg me not to send it. I couldn’t understand his point. It was just a reply, a mere reply. Yes written in anger and hunger but that was all to it. Nothing bad, no evil. Just a reply. Or so I thought

He seized the letter and refused to give it back. I didn’t have the energy to struggle or write another letter so I let it go. Few days later I saw a note around and I read it, I couldn’t imagine who would be so wicked as to write such a note. It didn’t matter what the recipient of the note had done but this note was too harsh and seriously it was a friendship breaker. I was almost concluding that wicked people still abound in this world when I was startled by my handwriting and my own words. This was the note that my friend seized some days back. It was my handiwork. I was the wicked one. I was really surprised at the content of the note.

I underrated the strength of my emotions. I didn’t know I could be that harsh. Over what if I may ask? A pot of food? Eaten by a friend? But that was it. I was blinded by fury and my judgment was impaired.

It didn’t just start from the food. I can still remember when I asked my seatmate in a certain class in primary school not to bother me. I didn’t want to be disturbed but he paid deaf ears to me. I called out again “Leave me alone o” but he didn’t see the need or my seriousness until I had stabbed his lap with the pencil I was sharpening. I didn’t even feel I had done anything wrong until I felt the lead tip of the pencil break beneath his skin. It then dawned on me that I had done wrong. I dropped all I had and fled the class.

Or was it when I annoyed my cousin and she locked me outside the house while I was in tears. She was bigger than I was so any attempt to hit her got me more whacks and more tears but locking me outside was too much on my pride. I couldn’t stop crying and little by little, my staff quarters playmates began to gather. They just gathered and became onlookers. I was embarrassed even though I was too young to spell the word itself. I looked at them all and I knew this event would be mentioned one day on our playground. I was even angrier now at the cousin and as they all watched I raised my right hand and began to swirl it in a circular fashion. When I was done manifesting that WWF move, I struck the courtyard door just before me.

The door was partly iron and partly glass. Your guess is right. I struck the transparent material. The glass broke and my cousin was shocked. The glass wasn’t the type we have today, it was almost an inch thick. My veins were immediately cut and as much as I wanted to feel strong, my tears evolved to tears of SOS. I still remember the beatings I was given after the treatment and till date the scares still stare at me on my right hand.

I went through a period of dealing with my anger as I grew up but I failed miserably at many points. I have once walked out on my students because I witnessed an act of disrespect and insubordination and I couldn’t put myself together. I have once punished a fellowship member during a drama rehearsal and made public show of him. I had done a lot of seemingly little things in anger and I can categorically tell you that none of them had a positive effect, not even as a good memory. It is always nothing to write home about.

I have outgrown so many childish forms of anger expression but many times I still see that I need to do a lot of work to put myself under control and I already have many testimonies of recorded success.

I once asked a man I respect this question. “Sir, when last did you get angry?”

He told me he couldn’t remember. That he recently didn’t approve of something his workers did but he didn’t get angry even though he chided them. I nodded my head and got the message. The possibility of controlling your emotions is what you must have heard people call self-control. It’s not just denying oneself food or knowing when to and when not to talk. It is holistic in all ramifications. Just like a line in a particular poem I wrote would express, “Anger lies in the bosom of registered fools” Eccl 7:9 (MSG)

I am no fool, not to talk of being registered. I will keep working on my control of emotions. It might be hard but I know I will always be the better for it. Anger, in a moment, can ruin a whole year’s work. It can mare a friendship that took a lifetime to build. It could make us say things that would never attract forgiveness and any act carried out in anger always leads to consequences that hardly have remedies.

When next you get angry. Withdraw before you project, be calm before you act, think before you respond and be reticent before venting, because I have proven the fact that with time anger would fall as it had risen, however knowing that time is not always available, I would recommend that we seek another stronger antidote: Personal counsel and self-control. It’s easy to learn that when you daily peruse and meditate the book where these lines are drawn from…

Eph 4:26-27 “When angry, do not sin; do not ever let your wrath (your exasperation, your fury or indignation) last until the sun goes down. Leave no [such] room or foothold for the devil [give no opportunity to him].” (AMP)