Friday, April 12, 2013

my anger is a dirty pigeon wing.


There is a nasty dead pigeon on the sidewalk near my house. I have passed it every day for a week now, and every time I come upon it, it takes me by surprise, I have a little freak out situation where I make weird grossed-out noises and do a very awkward walk/dance around the carcass. As soon as I pass it, I recover from my repulsion until the next day.
So...what? So while I am walking I do some of my best thinking, and lately I've been getting mad about stuff and I HATE being mad. It feels like something I am not good at, like sports that involve coordination or video games that also involve coordination. I just feel uncomfortable when I'm mad. I get weirded out by it. I feel as awkward and embarressed as I did walking down the hallways in middle school. I just want it to go away. I want to step around it. And like the nasty old pigeon wing, I forget about it as soon as the feeling passes, until the next time, when I again have no clue how to deal with it.
As I was walking I decided to follow the analogy to it's (hopefully) logical end. Where does that take me and the pigeon wing and my anger? If the pigeon wing symbolizes the trigger to my anger, then I should be moving it out of the way, and putting it in the trash can like a grown up human being would? Do I ignore it? Do I stare at it until I am not grossed out by it anymore? I don't know. In my experience, you cannot simply move the thing that makes you angry out of your way. Say, if you were mad at a person. You do not get to "remove" them because that is illegal and you are not in the Mafia. Ignoring things usually backfires on me as well. Staring my anger in the face seems like a good idea to do once or twice, but to continually do so seems like a one-way ticket to losing your marbles.
My conclusion: take deep breathes and find a confident and graceful way to step boldly past the damn thing. Sometimes beautiful things that turn ugly are the things that upset us the most. I am in no way saying that getting mad is wrong. I think we need to feel alright about being angry. I just know that, for me, I feel much better when I figure out a way to deal with it. Wallowing in it? No thank you. Sounds nasty. Out of my way, dead pigeon.

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