Changing My Relationship with Anger

With all of the coughing, I couldn't really do any yoga or meditation while I was sick, which has really thrown me off. I'm back in the habits now, but it didn't take long for my back pain to return (giving me trouble sleeping here and there again). It'll get better, but it'll take time, of course.


I had a strange incident occur while I was sick, in which I was out searching for a medication that had helped us, but we had only enough to find that out, and no more. The search was ultimately futile. During the search, I was feeling miserable and frustrated at every turn, and as a consequence easily angered. It was almost like an out of body experience, where I was furiously and unreasonably angry at everything at the same time I was observing myself and thinking that the person I was watching was acting like a madman. Very strange.

A week or two later I was feeling better, but apparently still having anger issues beneath the surface. I had a dream where I was called in to work for some entirely unreasonable purpose. I actually had to write some kind of report and deliver it to higher-ups at a nearby hotel where a lot of co-workers were also working. This bears no resemblance whatsoever to what I actually do at work. So in the dream, I made the delivery as requested, but made it very obvious exactly how displeased I was at having to do it, doing things like walking directly over tables where management had meetings in progress, delivering the report, then stalking back out in the same mode as I'd entered in spite of the horrified reactions around me.

I'm not at all sure what that meant. Things are actually going relatively well with my job right now, though my wife is having a tough time of it. Maybe I'm getting angry that things are so difficult for her and there is very little I can do except be sympathetic.

There was also an incident where I was angered in a social situation, which isn't worth the telling. I stayed in relative control, but I could tell that the anger I was experiencing was disproportionate to the reason for it.

Most of this happened after I returned to my meditation practice after I recovered from being sick. I think I managed to tap into something that I need to address. I think I'm still carrying a lot of anger around from experiences in my childhood that I'm not going to talk about here, and when I get angry about something in the present, that older anger wells up as well and expands the current anger to disproportionate levels. Useful to know, but what do I do about it? The past is the past.

I also catch myself getting angry about the motives of others, which makes no sense at all, since there is nothing I can do about that. It's interesting to note, though. I really need to work on skillful handling of situations as they arise, thinking of the other person's motives as just another factor to be taken into account, and not reacting emotionally. Easier said than done, though.

Sick for Two Weeks

Getting better, but still not 100%. I've never been so sick for so long that didn't involve surgery. At least the coughing has subsided enough for me to get some sleep, which seems like a really good idea just now...

Sick for a Week

I don't get sick often (maybe once or twice a year), and when I do, I almost always snap back within two days. I don't remember feeling so physically bad without surgery being involved since I had food poisoning when I was 16. This flu bug started last Monday afternoon. My throat started closing up and a headache creeped up on me during the working day. At the time, I just attributed those things to work tension, as I was having a bad night. When I got home from work and started having dinner, I started experiencing serious chills, and was soon shaking. My wife had to help me get to bed because I couldn't get there myself.

I'll spare the reader the rest of the details, except that I'm still wrestling through this thing. I've gotten nothing done for a damn week, I'm frustrated as heck, and I'm still not done with it. I've been sleeping sitting up in a chair because any attempts to sleep in bed result in uncontrollable and painful coughing for a half hour or so. I'm feeling a little better, if not 100%, and hope to go to work tomorrow.

My wife is on Day Three herself, and generally recovers much more slowly than I do. This isn't good.

Inception & Devil

"Inception" has some nifty ideas if you can suspend disbelief regarding the idea of dreams within dreams, which doesn't work very well for me, to be honest. It's also about an hour and one layer too long (you'll know what I mean by that if you see it). I think they chose the best possible ending, though I'm sure the top continues to spin.

"Devil" is the one with five characters stuck in an elevator, and one of them may be the Devil himself. The film actually spends a lot of time with the rescuers as well as with the people in the elevator, adding a lot of depth. I'd like to have learned more about the characters in the elevator than we do, but balancing that with the mystery of which one of them is the Devil may have been too difficult to pull off. One of the key ideas of the movie is that the Devil doesn't need a lot of help because human beings are nasty enough, balanced by the fact that human beings are also capable of stepping up and showing great compassion. The ending of this one worked well for me, too, though the Devil gets just a shade too much screen time at the end to remain scary enough.