I’ve looked at the blank WordPress screen for a few minutes now, trying to decide which topic to write about. Phone calls and emails and Facebook Status Updates have left me more frustrated, angry and depressed than I’ve been for a long while.
I toyed with writing about one of those topics that has upset me but it occurs to me just what a blue language waste of time that would be. I’ve written about all of these subjects before. I’ve included links to scientific data which underscore my point. I’ve been incredibly candid about my personal life in order to make a point–at great cost to my natural introversion. Yet the points go not only unconsidered but, frankly, it appears they go unheard as well.
Now I’m left with only frustration and anger and the millstone of hopelessness.
Where do I put that?
I’ve seen a lot of people who share the same faith background and culture that I grew up in and I see them so blinded by anger that they would rather embrace the hot stew of heedless hate than come to grips with changes in the world.
I can’t be that and I can’t do that. But here I am watching what are essentially human rights violations caused by government intrusion and being unable to do anything about it. Anything.
Yet I don’t want to be that angry person who hates everything and grudgingly moves about in society. I don’t want my anger to be more important to me than my sanity, my relationships, my faith.
So what do I do with it? Where do I put it? How do I make it productive or minimise it so that at the very least it isn’t intrusive? I don’t want anger to rule me as it festers.
But I am angry.
I’m allowed to be angry. I remember at one point speaking honestly about the things that made me angry got me censured by someone who told me I had really bad manners and they weren’t speaking to me anymore. Actually they said that behind my back. Which strikes me as really bad manners now that I think about it. Anyway, I thought about that a lot and I thought ” you know what? That’s bull. I have just as much right to be angry as another person. ” So yes, I’m allowed to be angry. Please don’t think that by my asking where I put that anger that I’m looking for folks to tell me to not be angry. Anger isn’t a sin, it isn’t part of the Dark Side. (What a philosopher that greedbag Lucas turned out to be, eh?)
Anger is ok. It can be an engine of change, theoretically. But when it isn’t, what do you do with it?
Just Another Pretty Farce 
I understand all that, and empathize. But allow me to tell you a story that gets repeated in our house more than I’d like to admit.
Linda and I are (as you may guess) utterly different people. This is, I think, by design, the strengths of the one cover the weakness of the other, and so on. Linda is primarily a Melancholy while I am primarily Phlegmatic. She’s perfectionistic, I go with the flow. What happens is she has an idea that’s both pragmatic and common sense, and she tells me. I hear her idea but put it off or deny it outright instead of immediately embracing it (thus denying her the warm fuzzies that come with camaraderie and acceptance). I forget about her suggestion for a week or three, and then, out of the blue, I’ll have an idea that’s fresh to me but is in reality pretty much exactly what Linda had suggested weeks ago. At first she would get angry that I was co-opting her ideas but over the years, she grew to accept that was just how we worked – she’d have a great idea, I’d shoot it down without preamble, and then I’d come around to her perspective in the fullness of time, the practical effect of her leading me by a couple of weeks in most important things).
But it doesn’t end there. God (I believe) has worked on me to a) show me this pattern, and b) help me to shoot down my initial contrarianism and embrace her ideas sooner, even getting to the place where I accept and laud her ideas right away even if I don’t feel it in the moment because we’ve been down this road many times before and because I know and respect her abilities and because I want to show her I do listen and I do love her.
Bringing all this back around, my point is this – people who read your posts may not be responding in the way that indicates they have either grokked or embraced your wisdom, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t heard and are completely immune to the teaching. I’ve found that many things I come around to believe were planted days, months, or years before.
In other words, when you write something and people appear to be just as brusque or oblivious as always, you may have planted a seed that the holy spirit can nurture and cause to sprout and bloom much later down the road.
tldr – don’t stop writing just because the immediate feedback looks like people aren’t reading and aren’t learning.
Oh, I’m not stopping the writing. I can’t stop writing like sharks can’t stop swimming. The fact that I was still at least jotting novel notes and FB statuses when I was too weak to walk to the kitchen for a drink is testament to that.
And I guess it is encouraging to know that somewhere out there sits the seed of something I said that may come to life someday.
I suppose it’s just the frustration of feeling like I’m powerless to help. I heard from four different corners of my social sphere in the last 36 hours, all of which were engaged in suffering the same battle. It just hit home how completely unchanged the world is.
You understand that the anger comes from frustration, and you understand that the frustration comes from your (perceived) inability to use your energy to effect the change that you want. So put that energy to work. You can get politically active in some organized way that may help you get the results you’d like, however slowly and incrementally. Or you can take the energy and put it into your writing — you know that Flaubert recommended that writers have sane, comfortable personal lives and save the drama for their work? — same with other sorts of energy, I think.
Yes, you are allowed to be angry. Keep writing. Filter out the bad in social media and keep going. I’m not much of a person to be giving advice on this topic, but I think it’s a good thing you’ve embraced your right to be angry rather than suppressing your anger.
At the risk of sounding too preachy or overspiritualizing…
“…casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” – 1 Pet. 5:7
“The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous [person] avails much.” – James 5:16
Reading the Psalms tends to calm me when I’m raging. Watching others pour out the rage and turn from angst to praise puts things back into perspective.
There’s only one ultimate solution to the world’s junk: Jesus. So on the one hand, I give up and try not to care so hard. And on the other hand I ask Him, “What can I do? Is there anything I can do?”
And if there is, I do it. If not… I try not to waste any more time and energy on it. Take all my feelings, pour ’em into a prayer, and let it go. Wash, rinse and repeat as needed…
The fatalist in me knows some things will not change until Judgment Day because people are flawed and the world is cursed. But I will never, never go with that flow. I may be drowned in the tidal wave, but I won’t be part of it. That’s my revenge, and revenge goes a long way to cool anger.
I keep my eyes on Jesus. Everyone else is a POW or brother in arms (sometimes a stupid brother in arms, but, hey, I’m no rocket scientist most of the time). As I forgive I will be forgiven.
It’s OK to be angry. It is the energy to effect change. Be angry but do not sin. That’s the trick.