“You shouldn’t give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don’t care at all.”
- Marcus Aurelius
I love this quote, and extending the thinking out a little further we can get to a useful mechanism for introspection.
If we accept, as we should, that we don’t control the world around us, that we only control what we think, feel, say and do, then where to look for the cause of our anger?
Many of us don’t have the skill to manage our states so that anger does not arise at all. However, we can, to a large extent, choose how long we experience the feeling for, and we can also use the sensation as an opportunity to look at how we are making meaning of the world.
By turning our attention inward, we can begin to unpack the true cause of anger. What it is about our reaction that we don’t like in the face of an external event? Is the root of the anger self-judgement over our lack of courage to say something? Is our ongoing anger caused by an over-attachment to a lost or damage object? Is our anger perpetuated by frustration at the emotion arising in the first place?
If we become curious about why our anger persists, we can gain some additional self-awareness. And awareness is the first step to release.