I am enamored of the idea of being a peacemaker. Blessed though peacemakers may be, their work is hard and the fruit may be very subtle, overshadowed by the very forces they are trying to mitigate if nor eliminate.


The internal peace, however, may be the hardest peace to secure. Life is all a challenge and outlining the things one wants highlights the things one does not have. Everyone must come to terms with this and my observation has been that most people will embrace a "get yours" ethos before contemplating making peace with their situations. To be sure, many of us swing through various grades along the spectrum between selfishness and selflessness through our lives. But the tally in the end comes from what characteristics we make a habit of acting on. We can fall into our habits, or we can practice them until they are our nature. Or, as with most things, we become an amalgam of trying and running on instinct.

I try not to endulge anger very much. When I identify it I typically realize I want it out, gone. I feel corroded and lessened by it. I can't think clearly and I react to every stressor with disproportionate force. It makes me anxious which carries a battery of physical effects that I find worrisome. Not to mention it kills my attention span for anything outside of the scope of what I'm angry about and damages my ability to feel other emotions and act on them.

I can feel it seething under the surface when my reaction to someone is anger. But if we're in the process of trying to resolve something I try to keep it down and focus on peacemaking. I truly want to create a state of peace and understanding even while there is a storm of desire for validation and, often, restitution for wrongs I am feeling. I'll continue on in this state pushing for what I see as bridge-building, communion, united resolution. But my discipline for it can and will slip at some point and I can't keep the anger to a mere seethe forever.

It may be hard to see this in me. I don't want the conversation to become about my internal war. I guess I often don't want to talk about myself and my feelings until they're all I can think about. When I have capacity for something else I would rather go on about that. I'm not sure why and right now I'm not sure that it's such a good idea. But I still shrink from answering the ubiquitous conversation opener "how are you?" I'm rarely ever "fine," thank you. But it makes me ...itchy... to focus on how I'm feeling, especially when it's negative. I don't like the attention when there's something else perfectly reasonable and available for conversing on. I don't like my emotions to become problems for other people, so I keep them to myself when possible. Which in practice has meant I may give off a vibe of something but I won't address it. And then it may (or may not) bubble over until it's all I can think about.

The struggle I see when anger is seething within is to try to keep my ego out of the conversation and to humble myself to the situation. I may want validation but I do what I can to set that wanting aside in favor reaching for compromise and common ground. There are two problems with this. One is this approach often feels unilateral. Often - and this could easily just be proof I don't yet have the required patience - I feel like I'm the only one reaching for peace and understanding, that my effort to reach is not being matched on the other side. There might be things like unilateral warfare or unilateral cease-fires, but there is NO such thing as unilateral peace. The other is that avoidance of my own anger fuels it enough to burst out and overtake my desire for peace.

I don't like it. I don't like raising my voice to people. I don't like giving in to the impulses of calling people names. It feels like giving up. But the things I do believe about outrage is what tips us off to outrage. Our sense of being wronged isn't wrong even if it can be utterly illogical.

But what to do with it? The trouble with anger is that I've found endulging it breaks things. Its impulse leads to action from letting fly an insult to fomenting revolution. Heads end up on pikes because of anger, and friendships end.

The right time and method of expression always elude me. And this is in part because all in all I would rather not express it and in fact would prefer to not experience it, usually. Typically I've fought identifying the anger, demanding of myself a logical emotion that follows the reasoned structure of the situation. I'm not entitled to anything in life and therefore I'm not entitled to being upset when I don't get what I want. This isn't all that healthy, really. In order to avoid anger I have in the past retreated to hurt and self-hate. but I want to move forward.

I keep wondering what Sister Irene would have done. My aunt, a Franciscan nun, was my lifelong example for peace and grace. I don't know what she was like in a state of fury. I never saw her angry. She had her frustrations but she struck me as patience incarnate. (Also makes me think of celibacy among Catholic and Buddhist monks and nuns and how that must make a number of things simpler. But that's another story.) I wonder how she would pursue peace even in the middle of such corrosion. I'd give anything to talk with her now.