You mad bro (or sis!)? So what is it? Dog run away? Water heater broken? Stub your toe? Someone called in sick and you know damn well they ain’t sick because they were lamenting yesterday that they need a “mental health day” and now your mental health is all in a twist because you gotta make up for the missing body? Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve been there, pretty sure we all have. I have struggled with being angry for most of my life. I had a nice hiatus that lasted for about 15 years. It was awesome and I kinda miss it. Now I’m pissed off for a good portion of almost every day. Why? That’s a great question, let’s see if we can’t talk it out.
Justified or Understandable?
So I’ve managed a bank for about a decade. I won’t say which one but you’ve definitely heard of it. Dealing with finances is a highly emotional occupation. As the great poet and sage “Big Worm” once said: “Playing with my money is like playing’ with my emotions”. People would deposit big ass checks, like eighty thousand dollars, when the previous highest amount was maybe five hundred bucks and get pissed when it was going to take a few days to clear. “I NEED my money!” and “I gotta pay this or that or the third!” or the ever popular: “It’s an EMERGENCY!”. First off, for those of you under the age of 45: a “check” is this piece of paper with numbers on it that you write a different number on that signifies its alleged value and then you give it to someone else. Eventually money should transfer from one account to another. If you have ever seen the movie “Catch Me If You Can” then you know it can be problematic. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. It’s actually very entertaining outside of what I’m talking about here. IF you were so inclined and I will say that you should not entertain the idea, you could print off a whole bunch of checks at home and write whatever the hell you want on them. Again, please don’t as it’s a felony and I don’t encourage the commission of those here.
Inevitably someone would ask for the manager. Hey, that’s me! I actually loved when they would ask ME for the manager but that’s a separate story. See previous reasons of why “money now please” and add the addendum of “I’ve been a customer for (insert length of time)”. Typically there would be the verbal abuse of someone they felt they could get away with administering it to, followed by my favorite of all time: “Well I’m taking my money out of here!” (spoiler alert: they never did). Anyway, I would nod in agreement of their plight and honestly, I would be empathetic and let them know that I really get their issue and it’s understandable that they feel that way. Which leads to the obvious response of “so you agree I’m right?”. “Yeah, nah”. See, that’s the thing. You can understand something without agreeing to it. It’s become interchangeable when it is not. I understand what was behind many wars and why politicians lie their faces off and why some people hoard wealth and why people cheat on tests or relationships or taxes or their new years resolution diet. That doesn’t mean it’s justifiable. These are just people in a (generally) short term bind, or sometimes actually committing fraud, who get emotionally charged about the one thing they need a quick solution to and lash out at whoever is available. Do not waste your sympathy on them. I will instead give you a controversial take. I feel gross formulating this in my brain right now but I guess let’s see where it goes.
It’s about to get weird
So I’m going to give you a quick synopses of a very fucked up individual. His name is Carl.
Carl Panzram was born in Minnesota in 1891, the sixth of seven children. He was forced to work the farm more or less from the time of being a toddler all day until some lawmakers who actually cared about shit made children go to school. Less than thrilled with the output from the farm and that truancy laws had taken away the day labor, his parents made the kids work through the night to get all the farming type work done. Well that is stressful and it was the late 1800’s after all so perhaps it’s no surprise that Carl caught a drunk and disorderly charge at the age of eight. EIGHT! Well shit. It happened again three years later and shortly thereafter he got caught burglarizing a neighboring home which included stealing a freaking GUN. So he got sent to a “reform” school. Did it have the intended effect? Well I suppose it depends on what the intended reform was.
Now imagine the current tweens walking around all angsty about trigger words and social media. I already mentioned his early childhood but when Carl got to this joint, he was repeatedly raped, beaten and otherwise abused by the actual staff of the institution. They took the kid to a place called the ‘paint room’ because the walls were painted with the blood and other things I won’t get into from the abuse inflicted on the children. He burned the place to the ground at the age of fourteen. He was not caught for this. For that part I say: Boss Move! Turns out however that these life experiences turned him into one of the worst monsters in human history. He went on after his release to commit unspeakable atrocities and I could write two thousand more words detailing them, but I will sum it up in his more or less defacto last words while awaiting the death penalty: “In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry.” Yikes.
So yeah, he was an angry fella. Unleashed on an unsuspecting world after a childhood filled with unspeakable abuse. Therapy then certainly wasn’t what we understand it to be today, I mean reform school was full of jail-sex and beatings. Is it justified that he would take these things out on his fellow mankind? Who knows for sure and honestly, think about America circa 1900. Mostly terrible people by today’s standards. Understandable? If you’re being honest you can understand how a human being could turn out this way given the circumstances. Justifiable? Can’t really go there. I started writing about him thinking that maybe I could find a way to justify his actions, hence the aforementioned possibility of a controversial take but I can’t. So I won’t. Moving on!
The Blame Game and Victimhood
So what is it? Are we just unlucky? Should “luck” or lack thereof piss you off? Let me tell you a story about a guy named Tsutomu.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was an engineer in Japan during World War II. Yes he was the enemy by default and I guess it’s kinda weird to write anything that could be perceived as positive about him but it’s utterly insane so I have to share it. He showed up for work on August 6th, 1945 in Hiroshima. Dr. Dre dropped bombs like Hiroshima and so did the Enola Gay at 8:15 a.m. He survived, and sure, he wasn’t the only survivor. Despite just having lived through the only nuclear bomb attack ever recorded, he got on a train home and returned to work three days later. Home was Nagasaki. Oops. He was there when that nuke detonated as well and he also survived that. Holy shit! I would certainly quantify this string of events as “unlucky”.
Now for whatever reason: if he was German you’d be far less sympathetic and I get that. I don’t know why Japan gets kind of a free pass but that’s irrelevant here. This fuckin’ guy survived not one but TWO nuclear bomb attacks. He predictably got cancer but lived to the age of ninety three. Ninety f-ing three! Hey, remember that coworker who needed a “mental health day?” Tsutomu probably could’ve used one but that sumbitch showed up to work anyway. And then he got nuked so maybe that lazy asshole you work with is onto something, I don’t know. I’m fairly certain though, that if I was traveling for work and got a nuclear bomb dropped on me; survived and then went home and then went to work only to be nuked again in a couple days I’d be pretty pissed off.
He could’ve played the blame game and used the victim card but he didn’t. He never thought that Japan should’ve started a war in the first place so he could certainly lay blame on both sides if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He wrote a book about his experiences to educate others about the horrors of nuclear war and became a vocal proponent of disarmament. He also became a somewhat prolific writer of poetry. I haven’t read any of it but poetry isn’t usually angry, at least not in my experience.
And here is where some perspective comes into play. It is most certainly unlucky to just happen to be at the sites of both of the only nuclear bomb attacks in human history. It is also incredibly lucky, at least in my humble opinion, to have survived two nuclear bomb strikes. So let those two ideas churn around in your brain for awhile and see which end you come out on.
Why We Mad?
So back to you. And to me. You mad. I’m mad. Well I don’t think either of us is Carl, At least I certainly hope not. If you are, use the feedback button and we can have a talk and then maybe plan a trip down to your local precinct. Carl is a rare example of the worst of humanity, both as a victim and as an aggressor.
Carl and Tsutomu are very different ends of the U Mad, Bro? spectrum. Both would be understandably angry. I got all weird, sorry, and thought about finding a way to justify Carl (I like a good challenge I suppose) but there was no way to get there. I could find a way to justify Tsutomu being angry but it didn’t seem like he carried a whole ton of anger around.
So here’s the deal because most of us will never go through what these two did. I genuinely hope not anyway. So what are you mad about? Someone disrespected you? Someone did you wrong? Someone beat you up? (physically or mentally) Got dumped? Got Fired? Got arrested? Be honest and ask yourself: did you maybe see it coming? Did you maybe deserve it? I’m mad about a few of those things and I will not mention particulars but if you’ve been reading then you know a couple. If I really ask myself; the answer is yes I actually saw it coming and in some cases I probably deserved it.
OK, cool. So now what? We have a choice. We always have a choice in how we react to these things. Anger is the natural go-to, it is the easiest response. There are plenty of times when anger is justifiable. Your wellbeing is actively threatened. Or that of your family or loved ones. Or you were seventeen in 1984 and the drinking age was raised to twenty one. The reaction is the hardest thing to handle. It’s easy to say that you control your feelings but let’s be honest: your brain is an evil motherfucker. It’s the Negative Constant, it loves to remind you how you were wronged and how much better things were before that happened. But the thing is, and here’s the trick: those are just memories. Think instead of this: what was it like previously without that thing that is gone? Were you happy before the person that dumped your ass was in your life? Yes? Go back to that instead of “remembering the good times together”. Was your job stressing you the fuck out and you wanted to jam a Q-Tip too far into your ear in the morning rather that hear what brilliant idea upper management had come up with to improve productivity? Great! Your blood pressure is probably substantially lower. And then there is the ever popular and dangerously preachy idea of learning a “life-lesson”. Got your ass whupped, did ya? Did you maybe (probably) have a role in inciting that? Should you act differently in the future, not only to avoid such things but to have better interactions with your fellow humans? Legal trouble? Unless the improbable happened and you were framed, well I mean c’mon. Make better choices. LEARN from it.
Yes, I know it is hard. I will say that even while writing this currently, I feel better about my own anger issues and in an attempt not to be a hypocrite I will admit that they will likely surface again tomorrow. But I will remember my own advice and work through it. I know that you can too and just remember that no one controls your feelings but you and more importantly: no one controls your reactions but you. It’s easy to justify anger by blaming something or someone. If you are angry it is also easy to claim being a victim, and in fact you’re probably right that you were victimized in some way. When we give that circumstance power however, we are actively choosing to give up control. So let us both take a step back and actually fight back against our brain. Don’t let it hold you hostage because it will.
You were fine before, you’re better off now, you know better now. Remember that.
I ain’t mad at ya.