"Consider how much more you suffer from your anger and
grief, than from those very things for which you are angered and grieved."
When I told Reggie I wanted to start doing a boxing warm-up
she may have been surprised that I was going to get up off my duff and do
something, but she was not at all surprised about the boxing part. She said that, of course, boxing would
appeal to me, I'm angry, live right along the border of Violence and Vine, and
it's an outsider's sport. As
usual, she was right on all three counts, but I'll leave the outsider bit for
later.
Let's talk about anger.
The root of the word "anger," is the Norse word,
"angyr." It means,
distress, grief, sorrow.
Grief manifests as anger, and anger as violence. I don't want to assign
that motivation to every act of violence, or every angry person in the
universe, but there's a lot of truth there for me. Psychologist Carol Staudacher calls anger, "grief's
irate companion."
I lost my birth family when I was still able to fit inside a
bushel basket, and play with clothespins around its rim. It's a long story, was an economic
issue for them, and the conventional wisdom was the kid was too young to notice. My birth mom and dad were traveling from Erie, PA, out to
Seattle, in search of work, and as they had twins to take with them, my uncle
and aunt offered to take care of me until they got settled. Lessen the load.
My uncle and aunt never hid the fact that they were
"legal guardians," and I had parents in Seattle - wherever that
was. I even traveled back while
still of kindergarten age. My dear
Aunt Therese took me out by train.
Before long, though, she was back to pick me up. My mom recognized that I was one
depressed kid, and not adjusting, and I think the one smart thing she did was
get me back to her sister.
I killed my parents over and over again. Usually by sending them flying off a
bridge in a spectacular car wreck.
It bought me a little sympathy and kept the explanation to the "why do you have a different last
name," questions to a minimum.
Abandonment and death, real or imagined, real enough for a
little kid. They don't want me, fine, I'll kill them.
Grief and its irate companion. Irate enough to kill,
When I was seven, my best friend - also Richard, also seven
- died.
Sorrow and its companion. Angyr is loss is anger.
When I was thirteen, my uncle died. I was devastated. Teenage alcoholic, high school flunk
out, US Army.
Loss and sorrow batter you down, anger pushes you up, but
you're fighting against phantoms.
Grandmother, godfather gone.
Another best friend, another Richard, best man at my wedding
- gone.
And to everybody else, and to quote two songwriters, I said, "don't ever leave me,
don't ever go," but nobody "stays in one place, anymore."
Buddha said, "I teach suffering, and the cessation of
suffering."
Loss equals grief equals anger equals a total greater than
the sum of its parts - suffering.
I didn't even know I was angry until somebody told me, and
then I denied it.
I used to think sorrow defined me. I used to think I was one of the least angry people I knew. Wrong on both counts, working on both
parts.
And so, I sit.
And so, I write.
And so, I punch.
Dharma/Punching.
