Too often, we lose sight of life’s simple pleasures. Remember, when someone annoys you, it takes 42 muscles in your face to frown, but it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and smack the asshole upside the head.
-- Author Unknown

While violence is in no way promoted here in these pages of thoughtful content, it must be acknowledged that sometimes you just wanna slap the taste out of the mouth of the one who’s annoying you. Sometimes a swift kick in the assets will alleviate the irritation you feel at the person giving you grief and just one good punch in the lip will stop all that nonsense coming from that person’s mouth.

But if you hit, they may hit back. Then you have to defend yourself, just like they just did, and now what do you have? Grown people fighting! And you can guarantee that somebody standing around has a camera phone ready to upload your brawl onto YouTube.

But we’d never do any of that anyway. We’d never hit and kick or slap and punch, right? We’d always take the high road, the high road that says using all that physical energy is a waste of time, especially when you can just cuss them out!

So there you are, passionately spitting all kinds of expletives in the face of the bothersome one, maybe even using a creative and sophisticated diatribe of words and phrases to get your point across. Then, they in turn toss a few choice words your way, and, there again is the YouTuber recording your every word. What’s an angry person to do? Keep it all inside? They say that’ll kill you.

Think about the real energy you’re expending. If you’ve gotten so mad at someone that you’re driven to physical of verbal violence, imagine the physiological happenings in your body and brain. Your heart is beating fast to pump increased oxygen, adrenaline, and sugar into your bloodstream; your breathing increases, blood pressure rises, and your muscles tense. You’re not thinking clearly, your thoughts about others are irrational and only serve to increase your anger. And, you’re frowning. What could you really be doing with all that energy?

You could be doing anything that exacts that same level of intensity – exercising, teaching, swimming, or making passionate love. Any of these activities not only squelches that energy but also distracts you from that fool bothering you. But if you can’t divert your attention from the anger, acknowledge that you’re angry and why you’re really angry, then take deep breaths and count to 10, 20, 50 or 100 to calm down so that you can more effectively deal with the situation. By all means let that nut know you’re angry. Don’t hold it in, that’s the cause of cardiovascular problems and heart attacks. Instead, tell the person that you’re angry, or hurt, disappointed, disrespected, whatever. Just tell it.

Although it’s always tempting to knock out the culprit of your exasperation, holding on to that much anger is self-defeating and destructive. Get it off your mind, walk away, and keep your hands to yourself.

Sadiqqa © 2008