Climbing Palm Trees
Anger is a reaction, not a habit
This is an experiment.
These are my thoughts.
This is unfiltered.
People. Rage. Anger. Hate. Frustration.
All these feelings, or rather states, are only too much used by our fellow human beings. Certain actions produce certain particular frustrations — certain anger — certain resentment. We know it before and yet hope again and again for a sympathetic counterpart and for identical values and morals as we carry within ourselves. But as always confirmed, various exceptions show us how naive this thought is and how far, indeed, infinitely far away, some of a reflective and self-contained life exist. It always happens in the same way: Small accumulations of dissatisfaction and annoyance from daily life accumulate and inflate an inner energy that most do not allow to evaporate or reflect in time. And then you look for: a responsible person, a valve, an outlet. Once they find them, and even in the smallest and least important situation you can imagine, they do it! They see red. All emotions are extreme and the little guy in our heads, as Pixar so elegantly describes in the movie “Inside Out”, burns down our entire moral and ethical control center, causing everything to explode. We want to be right, we want to win, we want to let go, we want to throw everything around us, we let ourselves, as the saying goes, carried on palm trees. Or, to put it another way: Climbing Palm Trees.
In our hectic and restless time, people are only too happy to be upset. Like fuses, we run through our world and every other moment we encounter, it can trigger and burn down everything. We allow ourselves to accumulate so much in ourselves that we regularly explode shortly before. We carry the dissatisfactions and injustices of our feelings into our everyday life and allow them to dominate us.
We magnify our own anger immensely and allow it through very simple and small situations. Suddenly everyone is against us, the whole world wants our bad and everything goes awry. We want to freak out, shout, diverge — the most banal moments and things can be the trigger. The long queue in the supermarket, every next red traffic light, disabled road users, the weather, the opinion of others.
Those who can not escape their own anger and dissatisfaction are incapable of pausing situations and the moments of their frustration, of stepping out and looking at the moment from a neutral perspective from the outside.
For this you do not have to reflect for hours within this situation from the outside and think about what is happening, but with only a little practice, it is possible for all situations to judge the resulting feelings within fractions of a second and to change their own actions accordingly.
If this succeeds more and more frequently, one thing will become crystal clear very quickly — no matter in what situation we described above: the purely factual moment that is currently taking place could not be more common in its reality and composition. Every traffic light is just as often red on this one day as it is on any other. Every queue in the supermarket is just as long on all the other days at similar times. Every road user could act against all our principles at any time.
We manifest our frustration in just these little things. We transform the cause, the reason into whatever suits us: a red traffic light, a service person, an object. No matter.
Two things are important here.
On the one hand, all these moments and little encounters on other days can be quite wonderful in a very adorable way. Every red traffic light means we have even more time to listen to our favorite song up to our destination, and rocking and smiling with loud singing on our seat. Each longer queue at the cash register means we can hear our podcast even further or go through a few emails and messages. Any mistake made by other drivers gives us the opportunity to act with foresight and with a friendly gesture to prevent a moment that could have quickened the mood of both parties. With benevolent respect both know about the value of this moment and continue to ride contentedly.
The miracle is that the reality, the moment and the actual situation always remains the same. All these paths happen every day and are always gone by somebody, somewhere. The only thing that changes is our perception: Because this shifts a direction that is unpleasant for us. A sense of time lack. A sense of remorse. A direction of belated cognition or pure negativity. So we allow one and the same moment in one day to help us with broad grinning and radiant faces and let us fall down into the most desolate abyss at another.
Secondly, one of the most important things here is — that can be transferred to endless peculiarities in life, and those who have understood this are unfortunately still the minority at the moment. The manifestation of our anger into other people, things or moments could not be a more humane and ordinary action. We shift responsibility and miss it to see what the real cause and cause of the frustrating situation we are in is.
We ourselves…!
We are the ones who let it happen. We fill up our emotional memory with so many negative and exhausting packages until it is finally full. As long as we have not yet found our personal valve to clean and clean up this store, we leave the house every morning and are completely overwhelmed and confused in challenging or difficult situations. And what happens if we get into it and do not know what to do because our emotional memory is already so overloaded that we are not able to judge the situation correctly? Right — we feel cornered — we’re going crazy and we, yes, we’re totally climbing palm trees…
And then there are those who can see all this in just a few seconds in almost every situation and meet the moment with a reflected mind. These people do not go the whole melancholy way on the palm tree and throw with coconuts around them, like mad monkeys. No, these are firmly anchored and protected at the bottom. Have the situation in view, their impulses under control and are able to convince, show and bring down the people again. On the ground, the floor, the firmness in heart and soul.
“You can not teach a person anything. You can only help a person to find it in itself.“
– GALILEO GALILEI
These people can accept every moment as it is. Realizing what they can and can not change, and if there is nothing to change, they just let it happen. Because they know. They know that they and only they are the only reason why they are now in the situation in which they are. A great acceptance and knowledge is spreading. You realize, that you have led yourself exactly here and it is not as hoped, not as desired — also here frustration, anger and rage can arise, but if you accept the moment, you accept that the importance of this moment on the the entire path of your life journey is just a breather, so you quickly realize how pointless it is to put in just a bit of frustration and annoyance and can think, for example, “Oh — strange. I did not think to find myself here by my own actions — I am learning for the next time. “
Reflect. Learn. Detect. All this can and should happen instead of giving in to blind fury. Recognize that the situation, a moment whose outcome is likely to be foreseeable and whose impact remains negligible. Reflecting that the annoyance of others is almost always a self-made problem and that we are just the right valve at that very moment — it is up to us to know how long we want or can serve as such.
Personally, I have had key moments in my life that taught me that: If other people encounter you with frustration and anger and try to transfer it to you, then do the following:
Do not let that trouble get on you. Do not let yourself climb onto this endlessly high palm that the other is watching. Realize that it is the problem, the concern of your counterpart, that bothers him and not yours. Realize how far you can help to solve this frustration and go so far as you can actively offer this help. Help him out of the palm, but only as long as you can and you do not put yourself in danger or trouble. Do you know the end of such situations, you realize how much time you would waste, here frustration or anger to rise in you. Know this, rejoice over it and carry that into your smile which you can keep up all day if you want.
A question for reflection: When we leave the house in the morning, we have mostly paid attention to the following things: Matching outfit for the day, usual hygiene treatments, short breakfast, all documents, gadgets, etc. — And off you go into everyday life. But wait, something elemental was forgotten: You got up too late, no time for coffee and enjoyment in quiet moments, the outfit of yesterday attracted lack of time and the many appointments in the mobile phone calendar overwhelm you. You walk out of the house with stress and 1000 thoughts in the morning and have the feeling of not having done anything before the day starts, and not having enough time for all the to-do’s you have in mind today ? Then you forgot something that unfortunately many forgot.
We take care of our appearance every morning: hair, skin, clothes. For our family and the first tasks in the job but why do we forget the most important thing every morning, catch ourselves in the vicious circle of negativity and do not break it?
Why do we nurture and care for all these things every day, but forget about our most important possessions: Our soul?
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