For most of my adult life Anger is something I have been extremely paranoid about. Anger is one emotion where people are capable of saying and doing almost anything and not really mean it. The lack of logic and predictability from a person when they are experiencing anger can have damning effects. Honestly, I am most scared of this human emotion coz it has the ability of destroy years of effort in a single moment.

A while back I had this fascination about learning about ‘sins’ in different religions and why they were considered sins. For some religions it was easy to find their list of sins(Seven Deadly Sins) but for others it required understanding deeper parts of the religion.

After reading about a few of the religions I realized that the two most common sins were Anger and Lust(I will skip this for now coz it definitely deserves a separate post). This got me wondering, here are a bunch of religions that differ in sources, practices and beliefs yet they are common in denouncing these specific human emotions. Maybe realizing these emotions are harmful wasnt exactly rocket science.

Then came the phase of understanding why these ‘sins’ even occurred. I stumbled upon a wonderful definition of Anger via one of my friends. They said “Anger is the lack of acceptance”. It made sense almost immediately to me. Lets take an example of someone cutting you off while you were driving on the road. Either you get angry with the person or you dont, if you are the latter kind you probably told yourself – “Ah these idiots always drive like that”. By accepting the behavior of the person you have indirectly over come anger. Of course its debatable what the right approach to the situation should be.

From when I heard that definition of anger for the first time, I have always applied that thought at situations I find myself getting angry… It has been almost two years now and I cant find a single time when accepting something could not kill away the anger.

I have seen strong relationships weakened by the inability to accept something trivial. When it seems that its acceptable to be angry at someone and not take the side of rationalism, its most often that people choose to be angry. Its sad to see something beautiful being trampled on, But in the end its upto the person(s) to realize that not everything is under everyone’s control. Its ironic when an emotion becomes far more important than a relationship… then again, maybe that relationship wasnt meant to survive.