Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Don’t Get Mad. Get Even.
(Commentary/Worship on Anger, Passion, and Building Something From Negative Emotions)
We’ve all heard this phrase before extolling the idea of swift revenge against any slight or indignity against our faith, our nation, our family, our community, or ourselves. I’d like to present a different idea on this phrase, maybe ‘don’t get mad, get even’ doesn’t mean take revenge, what if it means, in the words of MinnieJean Brown “use your anger, use it to build something.” Constructive anger, seems to be an oxymoron, But it’s simply a matter of the word anger’s connotation.
Jim Butcher, one of my current favorite authors, writes many spiritual and philosophical monologues, dialogues in his books. This monologue about the idea of constructive anger takes place in the book White Night; it is between the main character Harry and a mental construct of a Fallen Angel named Lasciel.
"Anger is just anger. It isn't good it isn't bad it just is, it's like anything else you can use it to build or destroy you just have to make the choice" "constructive anger" the demon said "otherwise known as passion" I responded passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves passion has brought justice where there was nothing but savagery, passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear, Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful. In Point of Fact that sort of thing doesn't really get done with out passion. Anger is one of the things that can build that when it's controlled."
All of us have those snap moments, someone cuts you off in traffic, you get tripped in the hall some one makes a joke about you. Or maybe you feel alienated every day by people. Anger flashes like a magnesium flame, or simmers slowly like a boiling pot. You get the same result: powerful feelings, a longing to strike back, to take away that moment of glee someone had at your pain, a raging satisfaction in seeing the roles reversed. I know I have, I wish I hadn’t ever had those feelings because in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”.
Taking destructive revenge satisfies us on a basic carnal level. But it propagates a cycle, meeting violence with violence, hate with hate, anger with anger, we, not just me and certainly not just you, must stop this cycle of hate and destruction. Meet hate with love, anger with kindness, violence with peace.
I can’t ever pretend going against what we feel in these snap moments is easy, or simple. I’m not asking anyone to change because I can’t ask you to do something that I haven’t succeeded in doing. I just want us to try, each and every one of us, to build something from rubble, to shape the destruction into creation. We cannot hide any longer, We Are Our Future! The Only Way We Can Hide Behind the excuse of powerlessness, of apathy is if believe them and live them. I ask you to take the passion forged of anger and bring ever closer the day in which we will no longer be judged by our differences, that instead we will love and be loved for our humanity!

Participation activity: Each of you will think of something that has happened to you that made you angry which you responded with anger and then think about how you could have built/created something that would have been positive in anyway. (can be shared with group but only what you would have built)

-- End Text--
I did actually write all this, feel free to use it quote it steal it what ever, as long as it makes you think.