Anger Thermometer

I was driving down Exeter Road two weeks ago with my Little on a Saturday afternoon. I came up behind a car that was veering from side to side across both of the right-hand lanes. I slowed down but the car still did not notice us and continued its erratic pattern. I beeped at the car and they finally clued in. The driver signaled that they were going to the right lane, and then they shot into left lane.

I promptly got into the right lane and sped past this crazy car since I usually prefer to distance myself from other dangerous vehicles. As I passed, the young male driver in the other car flipped me off and was yelling as me violently with a look of pure rage. He had another young woman in his car whom was presumably the reason he was distracted from driving originally. Love is blind but keep your eyes on the road, eh?

Half a minute later, the car zoomed up from behind me and I could tell that the driver intended to exact some revenge on me. I slowed down intentionally and let him cut me off as expected, then he slowed down in front of me parallel to another car and effectively blocked off the road ahead. I let him have his fun as I slowed down even more to get a fair bit of distance between us.

I was recently sharing stories of road rage with some friends and my Little and I were laughing while remembering this story. I assume the young man was dating the female passenger and that was why he was distracted from driving, which makes it even funnier to know that he would go so nuts even though he was trying to impress a girl. What, she's going to me attracted to this volcano of anger and be swept off of her feet? Maybe he imagines that he's an heroic crusader fighting to take the dark streets back from young punks like me...

Some people just seem to fly off the handle for no reason at all. Encountering a lengthy line-up at a store sets them off. Friendly trash-talk between friends becomes grounds for a fight. A polite request from their boss is met with an announcement that they're quitting. One misunderstood act from a relative is good enough to create a wall of silence for a month. One forgotten household chore or one delayed response to a question triggers the dreaded reaction.

And if the situation is really serious then look out! Instant anger pops up out of nowhere. The screaming kicks in on only the second sentence of the conversation. Insults fly like flies and bitter words are poured out like vinegar. Past history becomes a bludgeon to beat the other person down. Accusations and guilt pile up. Tables are pounded, paper is thrown and doors are slammed shut. Five minutes can go by and the rant just seems to be getting stronger. And it's not just that the person gets angry immediately, it's also the fact that they get disproportionately angry considering the trivial matter at hand.

My dad likes to explain this type of instant anger with a rating scale of 0 to 10. It's the anger thermometer.

Everyone starts at zero for their thermometer. Someone steals your lunch at work and it moves up to 1 for a few minutes as you try to track down the culprit, until falling back to zero. A friend spreads a rumour about you and it shoots up to 4 for a day until you can confront them, then it falls to 2 for another day and then you finally get back to 0 again. A family member dies unexpectedly and, mixed in with all kinds of emotions, your anger level shoots up to 8 as you yell at God and cry for answers.

For some people, though, their anger thermometers never get back to zero after something life-changing happens. Instead of dealing with that incomprehensible death in a healthy way over time, they allow themselves to become bitter and resentful of God and of the person that died. They simmer underneath the surface at an anger level of 2 for months or even years.

And now when another minor problem comes along, the effect becomes accumulative. While someone cutting us off on the road used to move up two notches, we're already at 2 to begin with and we end up burning at 4 degrees immediately. We overreact accordingly and everyone is mystified about our absurd response.

Repeat this process a few times for other major events in life. Get fired unfairly from a job, lose the love of your life, deal with depression... Without allowing that thermometer to settle back down, it just keeps raising the permanent low point of our emotions. Our body reacts to the constant stress of boiling anger, our relationships get worn down from so many harsh words, our lives become a trail of broken dreams.

It doesn't have to be this way. It's not an easy thing to deal with someone dying or a marriage falling apart in divorce. It's not a quick process and there is no prescribed formula for it. However, we do have a choice about how we will come out of it eventually.

We can blame everyone in the world and justify our anger or we can realize that anger will burn and consume us eventually. We can hold that sin in our hands and stare at it everyday or we can raise our hands to God and give it over to Him. We can watch for opportunities for revenge or we can release the person into God's hands to allow his ultimate justice. We can accept that painful memory as a fact of life or we can discover that we don't have to carry around that pain forever.

Pain and anger do not have to rule our lives. Those people and these situations do not have to control us. Our past does not have to determine our future. There is freedom for you and me. There is freedom for us.