So I started working on feeling less anger. It's taken a lot of years, and a lot of focused attention at times, but anger is no longer my almost-constant companion. I still get angry but I've learned to get ahead of that emotion under most circumstances, taking whatever time it takes to evaluate a situation in order to determine whether it's worth the energy it takes to get angry about it.
Most of the time, the answer is no. In fact, pouring anger on fractious circumstances just makes them more fractious, and puts people on the defensive because anger is an attack mechanism.
When I was a younger woman, I was always impatient—with myself as well as others. Nothing seemed to move smoothly enough or happen fast enough. I became (and still am) quite impatient with office politics, the endless friction that occurs among people crammed in close quarters but divided up among those who rule and those who serve. To my mind, office politics (and this includes squabbling among members on a board of directors) is a complete waste of time. This explains why I work for myself.
Of course, my impatience often made situations worse, often to my own detriment. So I worked on this skill—and worked, and worked, and worked. Still working though I have to say that I have learned, as St. Augustine once pointed out, that the reward of patience is more patience.
This brings me to a book (of course) that I read in my late 20s that is still one of the most important things I've ever read. It's Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda.
Now I know that long after this title was published in 1972, evidence came out that it was a work of fiction, and not a memoir at all. To tell you the truth, I don't care in the same way that people who are Christians may realize that most of what happens in the Bible is not historical truth but allegorical truth. Journey is allegorical truth to me, and since mine is the only opinion that matters in this discussion, the subject is closed.
There's a place in the book (and I'm quoting from memory here because I haven't re-read it in a long time) when Don Juan talks about the enemies of the self that one needs to conquer. I know that that list is different than mine but I appreciate the idea of discovering one's internal enemies—the ones that get in the way of our well-being—and working to conquer them.
Which leads me to my discovery of the latest entry I need to make to my list: doubt.
When it comes to things spiritual, I've spent a lot of my life being a fence sitter—astrology may be true, it may not. Buddhism may be the cure for what ails ya, it may not. Paganism bears some truth among its teachings but why does one need to be naked to appreciate it? Zeus up on Olympus may be worth worshipping or it may be a thing called God.
As I've studied and read and thought, all spiritual solutions have become one and the same to me, all false, all true.
Doubt—the easiest position to take.
Without my noticing it, this fence-sitting, this unwillingness to commit has extended its reach into other areas of my life—faith in myself, my abilities, what I know, what I don't. If you take this approach far enough, if "I don't know" becomes the answer to life's persistent questions, you can't move because you haven't given yourself a reason to move.
So I've come to the realization that doubt is crippling. Skepticism about what someone else tells your or tries to sell you is worthwhile. But doubt about what you believe about yourself is another form of fear, a self-imposed form of inertia that makes it too easy to have neither succeeded or failed.
This principle of uncertainty breeds anxiety. Worry. More doubt.
So I've been poking this with a stick, allowing myself the experience of faith, truly believing. And you know what? A lot of tension gets dissipated by faith.
Interesting.
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