Off to Boston for the day, but I got up early, I had the itch to write and check in on my blog, a morning ritual for me. I wanted to write about anger.

Like many people, I think I am temperamentally inclined to anger. I’ve felt anger as long as I can remember, starting with my parents. When you are formed in anger, you are angry through life, it be comes part of the neural system.

I was not aware of myself as an angry person, so I did not see that to some extent, anger is a choice.

For some years, I was not sane , and anger was not a choice for me, but an instinct. As I got help and grew stronger I realized that I was free to not be angry, I didn’t know that for much of my life.

I came to see that my inclination to anger was simply one element of my character that could be turned for good or for bad, for self-destruction and the harming of myself and others.

I saw that my anger could become a weapon for good as well as  evil, this is the gift of authenticity and self-awareness, something I couldn’t see until I began to stop lying to myself. The truth really does set you free.

I discovered something important.

If I desire what is good, what is compassionate, what is loving, then I could fight the darkness inside of myself and my anger and temper could become a controlled instrument for good, for my benefit and for the benefit of others.

It could help me, not hurt me. It could help the other people in my life, not harm or frighten them.

I could use the anger to help me overcome obstacles in my life and hopefully, to help others to cope with the difficulties they might encounter in the world. I’m not trying to be a saint, I’m trying to be healthy and feel productive rather than destructive.

I understand that I can’t will myself into being a different person, and I don’t want to. But I also understand that the moral choices we make are really who we are.  Morality seems to be unfashionable in much of America at the moment, it becomes more and more important to me all the time.

I will be known, I think, by my end I will also be known by my beginning. If you want to really know a man, Thomas Merton suggests, then find out how far I am from my beginning and how near I am to my end.

The people who want to know that are the people I want to know.

___

In a few minutes, Maria and I are off to Boston to visit the New England Aquarium and see a couple of giant octopuses and maybe eat some seafood. We’re staying at a hotel outside of the city I used to visit on my book tours, a fond place in our memory.

We will be back Monday. Boston is about a 3 1/2 drive, it’s cold and windy there today. We both need a brief change of scenery, the very competent Nicole is coming to watch over the farm.

I woke up this morning thinking about anger, and I thought it would be a good thing to write about on Sunday.