In his book, Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan's Teachings, there is some discussion in regards to anger. It is not the only time a theme has been written on the subject, but for some reason, the one I always recall.
To sum it up rather loosely, it describes anger as a valuable human emotion that should rarely be wasted on other human being. I believe this to be a valuable nugget of advice: I wish I were always more true to following it.
I like music loud when the mood is right, I rarely find a mood that applies this same sentiment to people. Loud people put my last nerve at bay and for some reason I have over compensated by speaking too quietly, or as my wife states, mumble. Combine the loud gene with the anger spectrum and I generally will not have a fun time; I will find a headache somewhere in the mix.
It is probably a very large stretch to blame all the world’s evils on anger, but then again it probably ties into the equation somewhere. I often wonder what and whom we are really pissed at when we lose this important emotion. I also wonder why we feel that the best way to deal with anger is to become even more angry and simply escalate the entire scene to a pretty well no win ending. Hey don’t get me wrong here, I am perfectly capable of losing it myself, many a defenseless golf club has met with a bruised fate in my life. I have said things to other people in anger that I will never be able to retrieve and I fear along with that loss I have lost or damaged friendships.
A number of years back I was nearing the end of my time with the company I had worked with since I was 19. It was a moment I both looked forward to and at the same dreaded. I was speaking with a very good friend of mine from California. He was telling me about a colleague who had accepted a position in a hospital in the greater Seattle area. His friend commented that the good news was that he would be leaving California; the bad news was that he was leaving California. It is pretty well was how I felt about my career change.
During this time I was working on a “Smart Buy” agreement for dealing with facility maintenance. “Smart Buy”(also used to indicate the best buy on canned beans at Ralph’s), was a term ‘coined‘ by our company’s purchasing group, it was based on the assumption that if a hot dog was good at a Denny’s in New York, then all hot dogs made by Denny’s were good anywhere in the world. This logic would apply even if you had to build a Denny’s at locations that didn’t currently have one. Albeit the math was fussy…
Regardless, during my meetings with a vendor in regards to afore mentioned “smart buy” I found myself not completely engaged in the presentation. I was weeks away from retiring and sitting through this canned song and dance was wearing me out. At some point the vendor touched something in my office, although I don’t recall what he touched; it was enough to send me into a rant. I lost my temper, told the guy to get out of my ^%*&(*# office and so on. In hindsight the guy wasn’t doing anything other then his job, what I was doing was yelling at him for being around me when I wasn’t in the mood. I was still working out the details of my future.
A few years later I was looking for something to do. I was informed about a company that was looking for a facility manager. I was interested and looked to forward my resume. I was then given the contact name; karma is a funny thing and somehow I knew the guy who I tossed out of my office years before was not going to be offering me a job very soon.
