You Asked For It!: Anger

My anger is a trickster, sometimes fooling me into thinking that I am standing my ground when I am actually just kicking up dust. When I step out of myself and blame others for what is rarely actually between us, it is my own heart that splinters, my own confidence that falters. The anger is familiar—that corridor of feeling, reaction, seething, amnesia—it is from another time and place where I was helpless to move, afraid to voice, powerless against so much I could not understand. Anger is a trickster that seduces me back into that young place and throws old images up onto the screen that sometimes look like people in my current life. When I decline the trickster's invitation and do not enter that long hall, I can hold to the present and recognize anger by other names ... mobility, compassion, boundaries, reserve, articulation, perspective, creativity, agent of change.