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On Hope and Anger

This is something I wrote when I was in college, deeply immersed in what I thought was heavy and profound thought:

Hope and Anger

The great thing about losing hope is that you also lose anger….

To be angry, you have to believe that things could better.

What a gloomy, cynical, self-absorbed twat I used to be!

Don’t worry. This is not going to turn into me taking advantage of your kind attention by reading ten year old poetry to you! That line just popped into my head after pondering the similarities between conflict resolution and consoling troubled individuals.

Conflict resolution is all about gently guiding disgruntled individuals from a place of anger to a series of rational steps that lead to the greatest net satisfaction for all parties involved. It’s all about focusing on which desires continue to exist within the realm of possibility and how they can be realized. If none of the desires in question stand a chance of being realized, it’s time to get over your tantrum. Sure, you can be disappointed–and even carry on whining for a (little) while–, but we’ve already established that it’s not going to get you anywhere, so I can guarantee that you’ll only succeed in making yourself feel, and look, silly–giving those around you lots of ammunition to ridicule you for years to come. It’s probably best to just cut it out.

The art of consoling troubled souls, too, revolves largely around these same principles. Achieving emotional stability by understanding which aspects of your life are–or ought to be–under your control, and which will clearly never be so….well that’s just the name of the game, isn’t it? But you can’t just tell someone that they’re being irrational (especially if you are dating or married to her!). Again, it’s a gentle process of guidance through a series of logical hoops that will ultimately lead to your interlocutor’s alleviated grief. Sometimes, we can help them get all the way there, but usually, the best you can hope for is for them to exhaust themselves and drift off to sleep.

Sleep is good. It reawakens the hope in even the most desperate of souls. I mean, let’s face it: It’s pretty hard to feel desperate with birds chirping outside, no?

Thoughts?

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This entry was written by Steven Nishida and posted on January 29, 2008 at 6:41 am and filed under perspective, happiness, self-help, life-coach, human nature, friendship, writing, teaching, community, learning. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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3 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. Thanks I really enjoyed this post it is hitting home for many reasons today!

    1. aunti debs on January 31st, 2008 at 7:21 am

  2. Hey dude. It’s rare that I disagree with you. But here I just gotto. Personally, I’ve found hope and anger to be pretty separate. The anger never really leaves. If anything, in the absence of hope, it’s turned inwards where it really starts doing damage. And, as for the birds singing outside, I had to leave my friend’s house the other day because the innocence of her two year old playing made me realise even more the shit that I can’t shake.
    I realise everyone isn’t like this. But sometimes the goodness you see around you, the apparent ease with which others can approach their problems can just make you realise how much you can’t do it.
    Oh, and logic doesn’t work. I have my own logic and it all loops back to it all being my fault.
    Sometimes, having a strong mind sucks.

    2. rob on February 4th, 2008 at 1:08 am

  3. aunti debs: Glad you like the post!

    rob: Very interesting take. Thanks for the contribution, as always. It sucks when you can’t get your own mind to listen to reason. Not at all trying to say that I understand what you’ve been going through, but I have definitely been too deep inside my own head and unable to guide myself to daylight. In many ways, the timing of when I came to Japan allowed me to run away from it all and reinvent myself. Not without a lot of internal confusion and angst, though. For me, it was the habits I had gotten myself into that contributed to a vicious cycle of irritation, anger, apathy, loneliness, guilt, and more anger. Suddenly being in a world where I couldn’t speak the language–and my silly lifestyle justifications didn’t fly–forced me to change my ways. Realizing that there are many things in life that I have absolutely no control over has helped me to achieve a higher overall sense of calm, which allows me to channel my addictive personality toward work, family and friends. (Poor Motoko gets clobbered with affection sometimes;-) Still need some big adjustments, but I rarely find myself getting angry these days. Hopefully, it’s not just defeated acceptance, but something more mature and respectable than that:-)

    3. Steven Nishida on February 5th, 2008 at 11:44 am

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