Anger on Graduation Day
Anger has a way of testing anyone, including the upbeat, sociable people you'd never expect to lose their cool. We've all felt it in some form, from a flicker of irritation to something closer to rage, and both of those can be turned down with practice. Getting through life without running into anger at all isn't really possible. What matters is how it comes out. You can handle it in a way that stays healthy, or you can let it spill into reactions that wreck relationships and leave real damage behind, physical or emotional, in yourself and in other people.
Often anger gets set off by something another person does or says, or sometimes by what they fail to do or say. For me it arrived right before my college graduation celebration, surrounded by family and friends. I had always made a point of keeping my temper in check, and at home I was usually the cheerful one, the person smiling when nobody else was. I'd just been through the graduation ceremony itself, where a state official and several university figures gave speeches. That morning had gone beautifully. We drove to campus in a line of cars, laughing the whole way. Strangers waved and grinned at us, because we were the first group of young women to graduate from my part of the world, a place where girls simply didn't go to college. My whole family felt the weight of that. They were breaking an old pattern, and they kept telling us how proud and excited they were.
The day after, a private celebration was planned in my honor. I was upstairs pulling on my gown, about to head down to the relatives already gathered and waiting for me. Then a girl I knew walked into my room and said she needed to talk. Looking back, I wish she'd held off until the festivities were done so we could have enjoyed the day. Instead she launched into a list of personal grievances that had nothing to do with me, cursing and tearing down the people she was angry at, some of whom were sitting downstairs at that very moment. I wasn't in any state to absorb it. I was happy, half-dressed in my gown, counting the minutes until I joined everyone.
Her complaints started to grind me down. She was normally a steady, responsible person, but that day she was worked up past the point of reason, and her mood began to pull mine down with it. My mother called up the stairs for me again and again. The girl kept talking, kept holding me hostage with her problems, and I didn't want to create a scene by cutting her off harshly, even as we slid later and later for the celebration. Irritation at her, my mother's repeated calls, and my wish to protect my own good mood all collided into a wave of anger, and for a second my mind simply went empty. I sat down on the bed while she talked on and my mother kept calling, and I told myself I wanted to come out of this well.
So I put my attention on my body. I let it loosen and started breathing slowly in and out, on purpose. I told the girl that whatever she was dealing with had nothing to do with me and would have to wait, and that I didn't want to be pulled into her quarrels with other people. I wasn't going to let my own anger run the day into the ground. I moved my focus off her words and started humming a song I liked, turning my mind instead to everything I'd gotten through during my college years. I thought about how grateful I was to be graduating at all, which was no small thing. As my focus changed, so did how I felt. We walked downstairs together and spent the rest of the afternoon without any more trouble.
When something hard lands on me, I've learned the better route is to steer my thoughts and actions toward something constructive rather than the other direction. Feeling anger is ordinary; what I care about is not letting the feeling push me into hurting myself or anyone else. I had endless options with that girl. I could have shouted, shoved her out of my room, made it ugly. I picked something else. Even though it felt like she was deliberately trying to drag me into a mess I had no part in, right before I went down to be with the people who loved me, I chose to shift my attention and let myself cool off instead.