Anger - a Feeling that Generates Change

There is a Chinese proverb (or so I have been told) that states:

"The fire you kindle for your enemy often burns you more than it burns him."

I found another quote years ago, from an unknown source (if anyone knows the source, please let me know and I will cite the source.)

"If you get angry and lose control, the other guy wins. "

Both would imply that anger is negative. Many people think it is. 

Why do we think that?. According to my American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the word anger means “a feeling of extreme displeasure, hostility, indignation or exasperation toward someone or something”.
Note that definition: a feeling. 

Since when have feelings been a problem? Something in the back of my mind indicates that feelings are one of the things that indicates we are alive. (You may not want to be alive; you may not want to feel, but that is not the issue here.)
Now, what we DO with those feelings might be a problem, but the feelings aren’t. That is a major distinction. It is a very, very, very important distinction.
Our feelings aren’t problems. I repeat: What we do about them may be. 

If a stranger hurts a child, most of us expect the parent(s) to feel anger and to do something about the situation. If we are driving and someone else gets us angry, generally, it is not appropriate to do something about that particular anger. Most of us recognize there is a distinction in these two instances, but, somehow, we don’t seem to recognize that fact when these feelings enter our own lives.


Part of the problem is that we were once children. As children, we did things that … well … didn’t make our families, or other people, overjoyed. People got angry with us and we learned that our behavior wasn’t acceptable. As we grew, we kept the idea that when people got angry with us, WE did something wrong. Part of us knows that doesn’t make sense. We tell that to our friends. We tell that to our children. We don’t think about the fact that many of us don’t tell that to ourselves.