The Art of Anger Management

The Art of Anger Management

Recently someone who reads a lot of my commentaries asked me if I was feeling alright. I must say I was a little perplexed by that question, but they went on to explain to me that it seemed to them that my writings of late appeared as if I was angry.

I can assure you that I am not angry. However, while I do occasionally write the fuzzy feel good stories, and will continue to do so, I find that there are so many wrongs and injustices in this world that I must speak my mind, and let the chips fall where they may. I consider my self to be a very lucky person. My health and that of my family is good, I have a home in one of the nicest places in our country. I am not wealthy by any means, but I do alright. More importantly, I have been blessed with a talent, and that talent is my ability to put my thoughts into words, and then put those words on paper to share with those not as fortunate as myself. For that I am eternally grateful, and I am especially indebted to those people who take the time to read my thoughts, whether they agree with those ideas of mine or they do not agree with them.

With that being said, I started thinking the other night about what makes people angry. Is it the changing of times, and the automation of our society? I know at times I can get very frustrated with that.

Have you ever had to deal with one of those automated telephone systems designed to make our lives a little easier? You know the ones I’m talking about. You have a question about a charge on your telephone bill, so you call the company to ask them about it and you get 26 recorded messages telling you to press one for this and two for that until seven minutes has passed, and you finally reach a human being who answers your question in 15 seconds. I find it strange that the telephone company doesn’t have someone who can answer the telephone.

When I call some place that has an automated system with a recorded voice that I am supposed to answer, I go from zero to angry in about 2.3 seconds flat. If I wanted to talk to a voice that can’t or won’t answer me, I’d call my daughter. I recently called America Online to get some assistance with my computer. They have one of those systems. After pressing numbers for a good fives minutes to direct my call to the technical support department, I reached one of those recordings. The recording kept asking me to say my screen name and every time I did it would say “I’m sorry, it sounded like you said Tom Smith”. After about four times the voice informed me that my call would be transferred to a representative, which was what I was trying to accomplish in the first place.

That’s when I hear this, "Hello, my name is Tubasi Padool-Ingoti Patel, but you can call me Bob". “Bob” it turns out is an Indian, and by Indian I am not referring to Ojibwa or Shoshone, I mean someone from New Delhi, who speaks pigeon English at best. America Online should be called India Online. This company has farmed out jobs that Americans should be doing, and that makes me angry too. Now if it’s a technical problem with my PC, I call my father who is 73 years old, retired, and works at his local library part-time. He is just as knowledgeable as some computer whiz on the other side of Earth, 13, 000 miles and nine time zones away. I should have done this in the first place.

Sometimes I think some of the smaller things make me angrier than the larger ones. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of the larger things upset me as well. The war in Iraq falls into this category; over three thousand good men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice for this cause, and for what? Oil? Democracy? You tell me. But aside from writing a letter to the president or my congressman what can I do?

It’s the small daily annoyances that get to me. The bank teller who insists on calling me by my first name comes to mind. Other than the fact that I come into the bank once a month to make my truck payment, how do you know me well enough to call me Brian?

What’s so wrong with referring to people you don’t really know as Mr., Mrs., Miss, Sir or Madam?

Car horns and the people that use them come to mind too. Why do we even need them on our automobiles? If you’re in a situation where you are about to collide with another vehicle and you’ve got time to hit your horn, you’ve got time to hit the brake. The other day I was waiting at a red light to turn left and when the light turned green, it wasn’t more than two seconds before the person behind me started blowing his horn. I’m sorry if you’re in a hurry, but I’m going to make damn sure some moron isn’t too busy talking on their cell phone and missing their red light before I pull out into the intersection. People that pull up in driveways to pick someone up and blow their horns make me angry too. Stop being so lazy, get out of the car and go knock on the door, and if you want to say hi to someone, call them on the telephone and don’t honk as you drive by their house.

On any given day there are a lot of things that annoy me. But when I get home, and walk around my place, feed my animals, and enjoy the quiet of my woods and open space, all of those petty annoyances seem to disappear. That is what I call the “Art of Anger Management”. More people should learn to master that art.