What to do with anger...

I saw this quote this morning and it made me stop scrolling.

A monk was asked, “What is anger?”

His answer was:

“It is a punishment we give to ourselves for somebody else’s mistake.”

Beautiful. And maybe partly true.

But the longer I thought about it, the more I thought, Wait a minute. Is anger really the problem?

We tend to look at anger like one of those emotions we're supposed to move past .

Be calm. Let it go. Forgive. Choose peace. Don't let someone else steal your joy.

Which is all good advice.

Except sometimes I'm angry.

Sometimes somebody is rude to me.

Sometimes someone cuts me off in traffic. Sometimes I wait forever for customer service only to be transferred to someone else who asks me to explain the entire story again.

Sometimes people don't do what they said they would do.

Sometimes I watch the news and wonder what happened to basic human decency.

And sometimes I get angry with myself.

For saying yes when I wanted to say no.

For procrastinating.

For knowing better and doing it anyway.

For repeating something I promised myself I wouldn't repeat.

So maybe anger isn't something we need to eliminate.

Maybe we need to listen to it.

Maybe our anger is trying to tell us something.

That wasn't okay.

I don't like the way I was treated.

Something needs to change.

I need to speak up.

I need a boundary.

I expected more from myself.

There's wisdom in that.

The problem comes when the moment passes but the anger stays. That's when things become a problem.

That's when I think the monk's words begin to make sense to me.

Someone says something hurtful on Tuesday, and I'm still having an imaginary argument with them in the shower on Saturday. They've probably forgotten the whole thing.

But I'm in the shower delivering a brilliant comeback to an audience of shampoo bottles.

Who's being punished now? Me.

I've started to think there's a big difference between feeling anger and carrying anger.

Feeling it is human. Carrying it is exhausting.

And maybe letting go doesn't mean pretending something didn't matter. It doesn't mean excusing bad behavior. It doesn't even necessarily mean forgiveness.

Sometimes letting go simply means: I'm not giving this any more of my day.

There will always be irritating people. Rude people. People who don't return shopping carts. People who drive 52 miles an hour in the left lane. People who leave their grocery cart directly in the middle of the aisle while deciding which pasta sauce they need.

We don't get to control them. But we do get to decide how much space they rent in our heads.

Maybe that's the real lesson behind the monk's answer.

Anger knocks on the door for a reason. Open the door. Listen to what it has to say.

Decide whether something needs to be done.

And then, when you can, show it back out out the frickin' door!

Anger may have something important to teach us.

It just doesn't need to move in.