The right to be angry

Sometimes someone gets angry. Lets call them person A.

And then often someone close to the issue tells them they have "no right to be angry".  Lets call this one B.


I find this to be a confounding and non-constructive response. Often person B will get angry at person A for having gotten angry in the first place. And then it becomes a cycle... suddenly person A is angry at person B for having gotten angry at person A for having been angry, because person A has every right to be angry.

Whether you followed that or not the point is, that telling someone they don't have the right to be angry is never helpful.

Anger is very rarely a rational response in any situation; but if they are angry, then they are also hurt.

And if someone you love is hurt, then you need to help them; not exacerbate the problem by stripping them of rights.

By all means discuss with them the lack of merit in their anger. Plenty of wise men (Jesus, Confuscious, Budha, etc.) have already done to death the idea that anger is not healthy. But ignoring it is not healthy either. Anger, once present, must be dealt with and processed.

So talk to your friend about the source of their anger, and try and help them to grow past it... but never tell them they don't have the right to experience anger, because it will only make them angry.

First Post

Every now and then in life I have a thought... I come to some kind of a realisation as a result of a plethora of experiences... and then it irks me that I have no where to write these things down.

It seems like these thoughts should be in a big leatherbound tome... but since it would be impractical to carry such a thing around with me I thought a blog might work better.

I'm somewhat hesitant to have this linked to my gmail account like this... since sometimes my wisdoms come from recent experiences with people close to me and they might not want their lives critiqued upon the internet. In fact I've lost friends over that kind of thing in the past.

But be that as it may, I'm giving this a go. And so begins my catalogue of lessons to live by. Wisdoms that I feel could enrich us all.