I am, by nature, an angry man. Passion feeds anger and passion often drives my desire to right wrongs and flail madly against what I see as the injustices of the world.
Equal doses of passion and anger made me a good journalist.
They drove up my adrenaline so I could charge fearlessly into dangerous and impossible situations in pursuit of a story. Anger also became the central part of my 25-year battle with alcoholism as well as the 12 years I’ve since spent off the bottle.
Anger too often replaces booze when one quits drinking.
Part of the cost of staying sober is dealing with the anger that can be as intoxicating as any drink. I’m the complex product of passionate parents, molded by passionate times and fueled by two passionate professions: journalism and politics. It is a mix as explosive as nitro glycerine and just as unstable.
The move to Floyd County in 2004 brought serenity to dampen the passion and the anger. Longtime friends saw the new calm in our lives and pronounced it good. Newer friends had yet to see the old, passionate, angry man who fought many battles: some lost, some won but all taking a toll of the psyche.
Over the last 18 months, however, the pressures we sought to escape in Washington found their way to the mountains of Southwestern Virginia.
Even here, one cannot continue to ignore the turmoil that rips our nation apart, the rising voter anger over a questionable war in Iraq and a government that treats the Constitution as a disposal document. As I compared those issues against some local events that seemed trivial in my mind, my anger increased and my hypercritical nature, never far from the surface, emerged.
I jumped back into the national political scene with increased columns of anger and vitriol on Capitol Hill Blue and launched a since aborted attempt at a national grass roots organization. Anyone who, in my over-sensitive state, crossed me in acts either real or perceived, became a target that had to be taken down.
Fred First, who — along with his wife Ann — befriended Amy and I when we moved here in 2004 — got the treatment. I went after him over a sign, of all things, in Floyd because I felt he had overreacted to the sign’s importance in the scheme of things.
So I overreacted with a mocking post about his feelings. I was wrong and I apologize publicly to Fred here and now. While we may disagree about things like the sign, I should not have attacked him publicly over it.
Fred, like the friend he is, sat me down last week to talk about my rising anger and cynicism. It was a "come to Jesus" meeting I needed and I thank him for it.
We also talked at length not only about managing anger but also about dealing with pain. One of Fred’s many talents is physical therapy. My rambunctious youth has left me with many aches and pains from broken bones, metal where bone should be and plastic in place of cartilage.
Pain medication is not an option, not for an alcoholic with an addictive personality. Fred suggested I might want to look into a pain management program.
Many years ago, in another life, a sadistic training instructor drove my body and mind to the limits of endurance and beyond by shouting: "Pain is only the beginning!" It was. What I must do now is make sure that the pain, like anger, is not the end.
Doug, I can’t say I have been following your career or your move prior to a few months ago, but, the posts you have made in the last few weeks have given me (I think) an insight into your character. Since we have never met I am probably being presumptuous in thinking we could be friends.
I know my own anger at the way our country is being run has become more strident as the years of Bush mismanagement have continued. I have the sad privilege of having voted against our President more than all of you in the rest of the country, being from Texas. I was in attendance at the 1992 Republican Convention when it was held in Houston (my job not my politics) and after hearing the speeches given “off camera†I walked out and voted my first straight ticket election of my life. It wasn’t the Bush side I pulled even then…
I once prided myself on my ability to vote for a man and not the party, now the party has run away from the moderate middle so far that I wonder if it will ever find the middle again…or if it even cares anymore.
I am proud to be an American. I am proud of what this country stands for. I am not proud of the direction it seems to be going…and it angers me that I am perceived to be “un-patriotic†when I question the actions of this government. I am getting very tired of being angry.
I was speaking with a friend a few weeks ago and the question of my disapproval of one of this administrations action came up, and I was questioned about why I thought we shouldn’t act like the people we are fighting. My only comment was “Because, we are better than that, and I hold us (America) to a higher standard than I hold the rest of the worldâ€. And you know…as I said it I had tears in my eyes because I don’t think our “leaders†see it that way…
Anger. It is a tool. And like any tool it can be overused and even abused.
Yet unlike typical, “external” tools, this tool has the power to take over our psyche, and we then we with our short fuse are susceptible to becoming the tool of others. Wind us up and there we go…
I learned how to harness anger in of all things, boys club football. A fantastic coach who when I was 13 shaped much of my adulthood life. He taught me how to get mad and take on the world. At least it felt that way on that football field and many more fields to come as this undersized player secured middle linebacker and fullback spots on two high school teams. A broken hand, broken ankle and a ruined shoulder were the price of revving up the tool, but I wouldn’t have kept doing it if I didn’t see the results.
I also revved up the tool throughout my early career. Folks said I was “consumed.” I took it as a compliment.
And then years later I woke up. In my late 30s. And upon awakening I was afraid. Could I accomplish what I needed to accomplish without anger? Was it me or my anger that was me?
I learned to be more of an engineer, and learned to think through the solutions to life’s problems in the quiet of my mental bunker, and then if “force” was needed, to apply it where needed and to the degree needed, then put it away.
Very importantly, I found that I could still succeed. And I was substantially less prone to outbursts.
Cured… maybe, when I feel things well up, I know to start thinking instead of acting. And I let more things go beneath a higher threshold of tolerance. And things are better…
Anyway, I think a lot of folks have been taught to use anger as a powerful tool. It is powerful, especially for bursts and for short term success. But as one who now has a few more arrows in his quiver, I now think my teachers taught me a dangerous short cut. I think maybe they needed the dangerous short cut for their short term success too. My football team when I was 13? We where the community’s first winning football team in any age/size group, and we won the bowl game for the county that year. I wish my coach-teacher, who I greatly respect, had taught me the dark side of anger. Did he know the dark side? Or did he just know that it made young boys toughend competitors and winners for the season…
Anger and its correct place… I guess that knowledge comes with age, along with some feeling of shame for past sins borne of anger, and then followed by redemption through practice.
Sorry for the confessional. Hope it strikes a chord.
Yep, anger and the revenge that tends to follow, can eat you up. But righteous indignation is another thing..that’s what gets the juices flowing and leads to action that can change the world. So it’s a balancing act, Doug. You have to keep in mind that your eye and ear for a good story, a picture that really IS worth a thousand words, that twinkle in your eye that precedes one of your wild and crazy stories, is all part of that psyche as well….so dig deep to find the roots of the anger, and a way to let it go, but hang on to the rest!