And So . . .

I really didn't want to leave my previous post where it was - ranting on about things that irritate me.
I was on my way to some insights on anger found in the book "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard (just a superb read if this kind of thinking is your thing)  -

So, picking up from the whiney last post . . .
See what you think of this:

# "When we trace wrongdoing back to its roots in the human heart, we find that in the overwhelming number of cases it involves some form of anger."


# "Indeed anger is in its own right - quite apart from 'acting it out' and further consequences - an injury to others. When I discover your anger at me, I am already wounded.
Your anger alone will very likely stop me or make me change my course, and it will also raise the stress level of everyone around us.
It may also evoke my anger in return. Usually it does, precisely because your anger places a restraint on me.
It crosses my will. Thus anger feeds on anger. . . . "


# "We can and usually do choose or will to be angry.
Anger first arises spontaneously. But we can actively receive it and decide to indulge it, and we usually do.
We may even become an angry person, and any incident can evoke from us a torrent of rage that is kept in constant readiness. . . . "


# "Anger indulged, instead of simply waved off, always has in it an element of self-righteousness and vanity. Find a person who has embraced anger and you find a person with a wounded ego."


# "Only this element of self-righteousness can support me as I retain my anger long after the occasion of . . . . "


# "To rage on I must regard myself as mistreated or as engaged in the rectification of an unbearable wrong, which I all too easily do."

So many things make sense when one realises this: I don't know about you, but when the "penny drops" for me, it sometimes leads to real change in my attitudes.
Or at least, a beginning of change . . .