Are you better than your anger?

I think the question should better be, "Is your anger better than you?"

I was watching as a friend was stirring coffee one breakfast. In his irritation over his wrong order, he ate his food dispassionately, spilling his coffee carelessly swirling the stirrer in the cup. The rash movement inadvertently spilled his drink over the white linen. This caused his house help to hurry and rescue the table from the soggy tablecloth with a rug, knocking the sugar bowl and the milk in the process.

He got mad and left the table altogether, clutching his heart to control the rising anger that spurred the fiber of his hypertension. What a waste of energy, health microns and resources.

A simple change of order, or refusal of the breakfast would have been better than wasted food, frayed feelings and a threat on one's health. A study shows that one out of every five Americans has an anger management concern. In a Gallup poll made in America, it was also found that two out of 10 employees got hurt by their co-employees in the last six months. That's a lot of hurt, not including those others who may not be directly involved in a conflict but who suffer anyway.

In the Philippines we may even have more with the suppressed kind of culture we have where frankness is still not easily accepted and euphemism and tact still have to be the foreplay to give negative feedback.

There are many things wasted when anger is not managed well. Take the case of Rolito Go, his road rage caused him and the object of his anger, their lives. For though he lives his still, he lost his freedom. Irrational things stem from mismanaged anger.

I find the lack of control over anger as a loss of liberty in itself. Though expressing anger is a must, there must be reigns over the manner of expression. One of my officemates in the past had an odd way of releasing her anger. She would get a basin of water and submerge her face in it and scream into the cool liquid. When she has "let out the steam" in the water, she regains her composure and is ready to once again think rationally.

How in control are you of yourself when you are angry? Lack of control shackles the gripped person because for a short moment he or she is devoid of rational thought. Take the case of Johnny for instance. He has the "My! Gosh!" Touch. Unlike Midas, Johnny touch when mad is dangerous. He bangs things that lead to other objects falling, he becomes uncoordinated which results to discord in his environment, and makes people around him not want to be within his reach. Not that he'd inflict any pain on them but more because his moods affect their own and brings to the room an environment of heat or gloom.

At work, moodiness begets moodiness. When you are unpleasant, people around you do not want to work with you and they will avoid you so instead of being able to do things as a team faster, it will take more time to complete a task and sometimes more expense.

In my younger days, I had an officemate who had very volatile moods. No matter how I tried to understand her, her mood changes were so unpredictable. She would just barge into the room and jolt us with a bang of the door or her things on her desk. It made work difficult for our other officemates would not want to "disturb" her when she was in these moods and it was hard to work properly when the air in the room had a brittle uncomfortable feeling. Message relay was "in" as we had to channel our conversations to whoever was in better terms with her at that moment so that we could proceed with the work.

People like this may require a company to spend more on stress management. Not for the moody employee alone but also for the people affected by her moods. Not just for mood management but also for errors that may result out of uptight conditions that affect productivity.

It is important to know first whether you are an angry person. To accept this as your weakness and to work on it.

Hormonal changes in women are not reason enough to keep people around them constantly weary and wary on their toes. Neither are work pressures and stress, excuses to pick on other people and become prickly. Once one notices that he is more angry than happy, more stressed than relaxed, more uptight than open, one must find time for a break or be broken or break others. There has to be a balance or stress will lead to bipolar behaviors that may need medication to control.

But the first key to anger management like in any other problem, is acceptance, the willingness to seek help and work on it, and full trust in God who can take control of things we cannot, and if your anger is better than you, that the last is your only option.