Fueling the fire

I’m angry. Mad-as-hell, not-gonna-take-it-any-longer angry.

I’m angry about the widening gap between rich and poor, a gap the American middle-class is falling into. I’m angry about the way people use  our country’s very real problems as political weapons. I’m angry that so many seem so determined to do anything except come together for the common good.

So.

If my response to all those circumstances is anger, then I am handing one small battle – my small battle — to whatever it is in us that is driven to divide humanity into “us” and “them”.

But how do I channel my anger? What do I do with a rage that won’t be ignored and wants so much to be thrown out as fuel to the fire?

I don’t know. If I knew, I suppose I wouldn’t feel so helpless and would not feel so angry.  As I say that, I wonder this: How many others who seem to be responding to desperate need with dismissive rhetoric and political posturing are simply doing their best to mask their own fears of helplessness? They are not responding from a place of love, but neither am I.

That makes us the same, doesn’t it? All of us, just walking around in the vulnerable skin of humanity and wishing we weren’t, somehow, so vulnerable.

Years ago, I read about a man who decided that each time he judged or criticized someone else, he would say to himself, “And I am that, too.”

My anger isn’t gone. And these 300 words won’t change anyone’s political views or deeply-held beliefs. People will remain far apart in those ways, no matter what I say. But for the 45 minutes it took me to write this, I have remembered how much better it feels to channel my anger into love and to live, even for a few minutes, in the awareness of how under-the-skin close we really are. That’s a very tiny battle won.

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