Has
anyone else noticed how mad everyone seems to be all the time? I can barely get
through a week of driving without being honked at (and not because I’m looking
so fine in my 1998 minivan) or flipped off. Seriously, flipped off. What’s up
with that? Who are these people who are so angry that I haven’t moved quickly
enough through an intersection that they’re willing to roll down their window
and throw out a vile gesture to a woman driving six kids in a minivan? Who are
these people who shout at their kids at the top of their lungs in stores and
restaurants? And the hate bloggers? Who is so passionately angry that they’ll
spend hours raging against strangers who don’t share their same view on gun
control or same-sex marriage? I wonder how they find the time and the energy to
be so angry.
There’s a bumper sticker out there that says, “If you’re not
angry, you’re not paying attention.” It’s one of my favorites, because I like
to pull up alongside those people and smile real big. Sometimes I’ll mouth,
“I’m not angry.” True, I’m probably not paying attention, but I also have low
blood pressure and a lot of friends.
Of the Seven Deadly
Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips
over grievances long past ... to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the
pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast
fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is
yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. –Frederick Buechner
