Storm Brewing

Sometimes in the middle of a beautiful sunny day, there is a terrible secret.

Sometimes when our eyes are full of delight and our hearts are full of love, we can be blind to the actual climate of a situation, and those clouds can come roiling up out of nowhere and, well.....you just wished you'd checked The Weather Channel.

I had a tough experience this weekend watching a dear friend verbally attack someone else that I love, and it all happened at what was supposed to be a nice event. After a little reconnaissance I figured out what happened, but that didn't really make it any better. It got me thinking about the difference between how a person feels and how they act.

I don't really want to argue about the feelings. You can't tell people their feelings are wrong. (You can, but it makes things worse.) But I might want to have a conversation about the actions. I'm debating this because I was not directly involved and it may alienate me from the person who said some inappropriate things. He's in a very stressful emotional state to begin with, and I don't want to upset him more. But I have not been able to stop thinking about how unkind the words were and how far out of kilter they were with the actual situation.

I did call the person who received the aggression, and extended my regrets that it happened. That might be enough.

It might not.

Photo credit Zevotron, http://www.flickr.com/photos/randomurl/842016056/

Authentic Anger

I was impressed today by the courage of a new blogger friend who started a post with "I'm posting while angry, and I'm not sure it's a good idea."

Kudos for acknowledging the risks, and also for proceeding when your gut told you it was important.

I think a lot about how often we are encouraged to calm down and think before we take action; and I must say, in general, that approach has served me better over the years than firing from the hip. But what if you think about it, try to "calm down," and you just can't get there? This can be an important voice, telling you to use what you feel to express yourself.

Knowing that someone is upset about something can be important information. And even more so, knowing that the passage of time is not diluting their feelings is a litmus test for me on the authenticity of their issue. The trick is not developing a character that is dismissed as reactionary. Well-placed and judicious anger can be a powerful tool for good.

(If you'd like to see the post that caught my attention, see Humor - When Is It Too Far? at http://hillbillyhomo.blogspot.com/)