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HUMANS 101
What We Can Learn From Our Rage
How attention can transform the energy of our anger
Attention is the most basic form of love; through it we bless and are blessed.
— John Tarrant
When I was a young social worker, I often found myself doing some crazy tasks that I had no business doing. One of these was teaching a court-mandated parenting class to divorcing couples in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. A supervisor, who was also in her twenties, co-taught the class with me. Though neither of us were married or had children, our work entailed teaching parenting and anger management to actual parents.
So, Jen and I did our best to be entertaining. In the end, there were surprising moments of connection. One part of the class that Jen taught was about anger. We distributed a xeroxed handout of a hand-drawn tooth, which took up most of the page. It was a childlike drawing of a molar, labeled with the word “ANGER.”
Jen would say, “Anger is a tooth with two roots.” She pointed to the roots of the molar on the handout: “SADNESS” and “FEAR.”
Jen continued, “I know you’re thinking that’s not true. But really, if you take the time to consider it, it is. You know how you feel when your kid runs out by the street and there’s traffic and you snatch them back and yell at them, ‘What were you thinking?!? You can’t do that! Pay attention!’ What’s really going on?” She paused.
“It’s just so scary to think what might have happened if you weren’t there. And it’s horribly sad.”
She paused again. There was never a time that people didn’t agree. The roots of our anger are sadness and fear.
Growing up in my family, anger was not very acceptable for kids to express. I remember anger as something that I either didn’t express, or felt I had to express in private. It’s why I began keeping a diary when I was in third grade. I often wrote about one of my good friends in the neighborhood, who I lamented, always wanted to fistfight boys in the creek after school on our walk home. “She’s just trying to be cool,” I wrote. “She wants everyone to think she’s tough.” My eight-year-old self was really afraid that we both might get in trouble — me by association. Maybe I felt sad, too…
