Look Back in Anger

And what of anger?

I have heard that anger is really fear in disguise. I have heard that depression is unexpressed anger. I have even heard that cancer is rage unreleased.

For many years I believed it was not "spiritual" to be angry. The truth is, we cannot really be living the Spirit as long as we are denying our anger.

I was an angry child. I like to say I was in a bad mood for 27 years. For most of my twenties, when I was trying to be spiritual, I repressed my anger, stuffed it, pretended it wasn't there.

Ten years ago, when I finally got on the healing path, I had to learn first to admit that I was angry and then how to express it in a healthy way.

There is a line from the Gus Van Sant film "Milk" starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, and it keeps coming back to me.

There is a huge crowd of people in the gay Castro District, where "Milk" is mostly set, and those involved in the protest have just experienced what feels like one more terrible injustice.

Milk and his compadres fear a riot. He gets on the bull horn and he says, "I know you're angry..."

And here we expect him to say, "BUT..."

"But it's okay, but don't worry, but it will be alright."

But he doesn't.

Harvey Milk says, "I'M ANGRY!"

And then they walk, together, in anger and in peace, to continue proclaiming their cause.

It's an incredibly moving moment.

I'm writing about anger this morning because I'M ANGRY.

It was a little thing that made me realize I had some unexpressed anger looking to be extracted from my body, just a little thing that wouldn't work properly, a thing that was stuck and I was trying to un-stick it, just a small thing.

The more I tried to make it work, and couldn't, the more frustrated I got.

I'M ANGRY.

Okay, boy, wow. Awareness comes first. Then action: time to do something about that!

And I will. I will go within, where the answers lie, I will share with someone who has wisdom about such things, and I will find a way to express the anger and get it out of my body.

Howling in the bush always helps.

Inspiring Message of the Day: My anger is valid. It needs to be expressed in a healthy way. Identifying it, sharing it and then releasing it will bring me back to peace.