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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Anger usually knows something true: this was unfair, this matters to me, this cannot carry on. Keep that part and drop the delivery. The energy can go into the letter, the boundary, the conversation you have been putting off, instead of into whoever happens to be nearest.
I plead my grief and sorrow before God (Quran 12:86). Ya'qub neither swallows what he feels nor spends it on the people around him. He takes it somewhere it can be held.
يوسف
قَالَ إِنَّمَآ أَشۡكُواْ بَثِّي وَحُزۡنِيٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ وَأَعۡلَمُ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ
He said, ‘I plead my grief and sorrow before God. I have knowledge from God that you do not have
Qur’an 12:86read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a pilot randomised trial, an eight week loving kindness programme for people with chronic low back pain reduced both pain and anger. It is a useful hint that a practice aimed at goodwill can move anger without anyone trying to suppress it. The trial was small and preliminary, in one particular patient group.
Carson JW, Keefe FJ, Lynch TR, Carson KM, Goli V, Fras AM, Thorp SR. (2005). Loving-kindness meditation for chronic low back pain: results from a pilot trial.. Journal of holistic nursing : official journal of the American Holistic Nurses' Association doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Energy that has somewhere to go stops looking for somewhere to leak.
Diogenes lived in a jar and told Alexander the Great to stop blocking his sunlight. If calm sounds soft to you, there is a version of it that is closer to refusing to be impressed.
A story that grips one person can harm another. Before reaching for something graphic to make a point, be sure you know who is in front of you.
Some reactions really do just happen, like a wind up toy pointed forwards, banging into whatever is in the way. That is a description of the problem rather than an excuse for it.