Angry at Anger

It’s a very activating time for many humans. And if it isn’t, I have to wonder about those humans.

Alongside the anxiety and overwhelm, I’ve been feeling an uncharacteristic amount of anger. That includes self-directed anger about being angry, because obviously I’m supposed to always be kind, loving and accommodating. Then I can feel angry for being angry at myself for failing to turn that kindness inward. I can feel angry at my own hypocrisy in recommending that others remain open to their experience when I’m struggling to do that very thing.

I can feel angry at betrayals. Not betrayals against me as an individual, but humanity’s betrayals of itself throughout history. The betrayals of the planet that supports us and countless other beings. I can feel angry at the feeling of being trapped in this situation, besieged with anxious thoughts, in a body with aches and pains, subject to sickness, old age and death.

I can feel angry at the very nature of existence: phantom energy vampires feeding on the transformation of forms, endlessly and ceaselessly, because of hunger and the instinct to survive.

I can feel angry at my own failure to recognize the essence of these fluid phenomena, which have no singular form or characteristic, arise from and subside in the same space, and ultimately can’t be established or indicated, preserved or possessed.

I can feel angry at my to-do list.

I can feel angry at the futures I imagine being denied my children because of my own grasping at prior experiences and expectations. I can feel angry at my failure to fix other people’s lives, even though every bit of my training tells me this isn’t possible. I can feel angry at my inability to not become reactive in the face of injustice and harm.

I can feel angry about fighting an internal battle to not be Sad Dad, so I can provide enrichment and unblemished love and acceptance to my children. I can feel angry that my partner, the love of my life, and I find ourselves as medium-old people at a time when we should be settling into some sense of satisfaction at having brought our wonderful family forward and nurtured them in so many ways. Instead, there’s a feeling of being denied the full flowering of that satisfaction.

I can feel angry at our enslavement under the tools of oppressive oligarchs and their technologies. I can feel angry at my own impotence, and sense the same anger in others at our inability to course-correct through the means available to us.

I can feel angry at the profound ignorance flagrantly and ostentatiously paraded in front of my face through social media, and the toxicity it engenders.

I can feel angry at myself for becoming deluded enough to believe any of this has substance. For forgetting suffering beings and forgetting the non-existence of suffering beings.

I can feel angry at my own exhaustion with the above.

And I can let it all be.