I have to get this off my chest … America has a very serious problem. And my fear is we’re not doing anything about it.
It’s not Covid. It’s not the current administration, or the previous administration, or the next administration. It’s us. We’re all far too angry. America has an anger problem. Civil discourse has, for a long time now, become anything but civil. We’re just angry. Wave after wave of anger crashing against our poor souls. A seemingly endless tide of rancorous talking heads and op-eds and—dear God help us—social media posts with tiles like “The Greatest Threat to Our Democracy …” followed by some diatribe aimed at whatever and whomever is supposedly at fault. It’s exhausting.
I’ll tell you my view. We’re all at fault for letting it come to this. A government of, by, and for the people depends entirely upon our ability to sit down and talk. Which means our anger—anger from the left, the right, the middle, whatever, wherever, whomever—it’s not these things but rather our anger that may in fact be the single greatest threat to our way of life.
Anger is deceptive. It feels like power but in reality it sucks the life out of anyone who holds onto it. I’m not saying it’s never justified. I’m saying we have to be very, very careful about anger. You and I cannot afford for anger to be our default reaction to the world’s imperfections because the world is a permanently imperfect place filled with nothing but permanently imperfect people.
Anger is addictive. It’s messy. It’s toxic. And, if held on to for a moment longer than absolutely necessary, anger does more damage to us than it will ever do to what we’re angry at.
Marcus Aurelius said, “The consequences of anger are more grievous than the causes of it.” Mark Twain called anger an acid that does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. Bob Marley sang, “If you quarrel everyday, you're saying prayers to the devil, I say.”
Anger wastes perfectly good daylight that could be spent a thousand other ways. And granted, becoming angry may sometimes be a natural reaction, even an unavoidable reflex, but remaining angry is always a choice. It’s the choice we often make, not because anger is righteous but because anger is easy. Anger is the lazy way through a tough time.
And have no doubt, anger is far more communicable than a virus and we’re going to have to help each other diffuse it. So I’m hereby recommitting myself today help you. To help you be something, anything, other than angry. And I’m asking you, with what you choose to say and do, to help me do the same.
Let’s not waste another minute on anger. Let’s diffuse the bomb and instead choose to build ourselves a beautiful life.