As sure as 2+2 does not equal 5, anger + anger never equals peace, contentment, or healing.
We live in a world that’s too often filled with anger. Some have just causes for their anger. Others just have unresolved issues lingering in their lives that cause them to lash out at the world. Still others were never taught other tools for dealing with their feelings beyond anger.
The relative anonymity and distance of social media makes it simple to torch other people, their ideas, and their motives.
Whatever the reasons for the anger or the justifications, the equation still holds. Anger + anger never equals peace, contentment, or healing.
Yet, if you look at many of the forces trying to reshape the world, it is anger that drives them. In a world where facts morph and people need scapegoats for their paradigms to work, it’s easy to see to why.
But I tell you this and say it clearly. No solution to our challenges will be conceived anger or its allies blame, hatred, and violence. The belief that these mindsets can fix a world already drunk on them is delusional.
Because of the immutable equation above, angry mindsets, motives, and ideologies cannot mend and heal an angry world. They may believe their ends justify their means, but their success can only result in another version of an angry world.
All the great teachers from all the great faiths – living and dead – have spoken with one voice on this. It is love, it is compassion, it is peace that can remake this angry world. Despite thousands of years of these wise teachings, it’s still easier for many people to rise and live their days filled with anger, blame, and hatred. They speak of “those people” – whoever those people are to them. They point fingers and they scheme win the game by wiping alternative views off the board. They follow leaders and voices that stir their anger rather than their humanity.
General Omar N. Bradley aptly described our dilemma at the dawn of the nuclear age.
We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.
We must get it through our heads that we are ALL in this together. For better or worse, we are passengers on this tiny little blue marble spinning precariously through a vast dark cosmos.
Peace is the way forward. Love is the way forward. Compassion is the way forward. It’s that simple and that hard. There are no exceptions to the rule. Anger begets anger. Love begets love.
The choice, as it always has been, is ours.
Just in case no one has reminded you today, you ARE awesome!
Ray
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