Tracks In The Dust

A Father's Advice About Learning the Mission of Life

Archive for the tag “Anger”

Lost in the Extremes

Take some time and breathe deeply. Concentrate on the environment around you and make sure to take in the environment around you. Center yourself.

Lately I have been around many people that are struggling with the extremes in their daily life, their perspectives seem to take on as far south and as far north as life’s compass will allow. It amazes me that they suffer through it and fight the urge to not listen to anyone who dissents to their view.

People are willing stand up for what they believe. And that is a fundamental thing about humankind, about our need to be grounded to our faith, love and core values. But there is also room on other levels for understanding. Room to know that although we should be on common ground on our spiritual plane, we can allow ourselves the benefit of the doubt on other things. That there could be more than just one way to look at things.

In this election year in the US for example, people are choosing extremes. There is a requirement for each of us apparently to fall on one side of the line or the other. Over time the center line has moved, and so it is not centered evenly. Because of that we make heroes out of the people who say what we want them to say. So many ways it leads to hate and lies, to bigotry and deceit, to manipulation of the truth to suit ones view-point. Sadly it is the fuel that may divide the country even more.

Another example is how often people wallow in their emotions and refuse to change their attitudes or frame of reference. Like a badge they continue to carry their sadness, anger or bitterness along with them every where they go. They want to deposit more of it rather than change, and struggle to understand why others don’t feel the way they do.

I think we cannot be ruled by the extremes, we need to open our minds to the possibilities that there are other paths to take. For many seem to be lost in the daily routines, the weekly demands of life. And it would appear that for many of them they have no spiritual center, so they seem to also lack and emotional center. They feel out of control – so the way to reach a feeling of control is to embrace the extremes with definite lines that cannot be personally crossed. They are lost in those places which are a struggle to return from – that require self-examination and resolve. The willingness for that needs the spiritual center. So on it goes.

Lost in the extremes.

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From KnowtheSphere great observation about things related

When You Are Angry

 

It’s very likely that everyone reacts to things differently when it come to being happy or  angry. There are some so genuine universal things that seem to be so great when it comes to sharing emotions. Those are the things that make us human no matter where you live on this big spinning globe I guess.

But what makes you angry? I mean so angry that you are not focused on anything else but that anger? Does start with hate or frustration or end with it? Is it derived from fear? Is it founded in truth, or built on ignorance?

When you get angry, what do you do with that? How do you manage it? Do you ask yourself later: why did I end up getting angry? which in turn may make you angry again (ha)!

If you can answer these questions then, I would guess that you are more in-tune with your inner-self than others may be. When I look at the recent violence that has happened in the US, I know that I cannot imagine someone being that angry and distant from the human race as to wake up one day and intentionally kill people because of anger. That tragedy is beyond me. Yet there are probably scores of thousands of more angry people out there, who are living with themselves with no spiritual or moral guideposts to examine their emotional state.

Also it would seem that fear has just fueled that anger more. Fear of people who are different in some way, fear of the unknown. The Internet has let loose a firestorm of opportunity for people to share their fears and their ignorance, but not in a productive way, rather in a destructive one.  And it adds more fuel when those ramblings  become so massive that even our politicians, celebrities, and leaders in the world just help to further reinforce what some of these very angry people believe to be true.

So angry people run to the Internet or some other place to find their false sense of need to gain the confidence, in turn it leads them to take out a gun and go to a public place and kill their fellow human beings. They cannot reason with themselves, and they have not allowed themselves to reach to the Words that would provide the answers they need. They are willing to even build their anger on untruth’s.

Finding your inner peace and not letting anger consume you can be found simply in the Spiritual things that God can provide. I say a prayer for these lonely souls who have let anger consume them, and have in directed that anger through their fear to  innocent people who have been in the way of their wrath.

I have asked my family  to pause when they get angry, and ask themselves “what am I angry about?” “How does it control me?” Life here on Earth is short in the scene of things, spending it in anger is such a sad way to spend it.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. Ephesians 4:26

 

Control of Your State Of Mind

Who has control of your state of mind? Doesn’t it really come down to you?

If we have anything to learn in our lives around how we live it, one that thing that truly seems to escape some people is “how one looks at their life and all that surrounds it.”  There seems to be so many sad or angry people who are stuck in one place- looking through a single vision. Some people walk through life sharing their state of mind with anyone who crosses their path. “Would you like to get angry with me?” they seem to say. Or “I am sad- can I share my sadness with you-” wishing that perhaps you can be sad too. In fact if you share their mood they may even start to feel better about themselves.

But then don’t we all have control over our own view of the world around us? It is OUR view after all.  Sure. We can choose to be the victim of the circumstances that have brought us to this particular point in time. We can ignore the opportunity to make things better, expelling the chance to change things perhaps because of the uncomfortable feeling that can come with change. Even in our deepest state of “blues” we relish the feeling, even as we lament about escaping it. No doubt it is great to experience to help put things in perspective.

Others may go searching for the more positive path ahead. But that can take time. I have met friends and family who say that “life is a journey” but they choose to travel that journey with little direction. They wander along “looking for themselves” – Change for change sake…can result chasing after something they may never find.  “Finding themselves” can create a reason to not go forward,  rather than working harder to  “create yourself”. Searching can mean waiting for someone else to define who you are, it can create boundaries.

So what do I tell my kids? Regardless of today, the next direction is based on your a state-of-mind I think. It starts there. Don’t let the anger and sadness consume you, don’t let it send you to places that can smother the reasons to change. Your state of mind is yours to choose. Okay, so we all need to have the downs to better appreciate the up’s; but we cannot wallow in it. Take some time to have the blues/ but then take the time to change your direction and create that journey with a positive direction. Choose to deal with it and move forward.

“Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
 

Choices for Humankind

All around me I see sadness and anger. People texting, blogging, emailing. calling, talking on the media, ranting on the Internet. They are often frustrated that things just aren’t the way they expect. The picture that they have in their minds-eye of how the world around them should be just doesn’t seem to fit how it is.

Politics, religion, education, finances, what others have and what they don’t have, how things should be bettter-different, more freedom/more restrictions. No matter where it stands there is frustration. Partially there are so many more ways to communicate how someone feels today, social networks, blogs, web-sites designed to sound-off on what seems like thousands of causes. Add the media “news” and “commentary” and you have an elixir for even more sadness, anger and frustration.

Some of the bloggers I share posts with are calling out for “happiness” and kindness and the want and need to be more part of the label “humankind” than the tens of thousands of other labels that everyone seems to want to use. There are so many ways to put labels on someone. Our lightning fast communication to the world seems to demand lightning fast categorization of the things said and the people who have said them.

In the end are human tendencies seem to have lended themselves to generate more sadness, anger and frustration. But that very imperfect humankind that we are, we can still have a choice. That’s the way God planned it. And when we choose to look at things with grace and empathy and understanding, our lives seem to move that direction as well. Some will claim that it is a religious direction (and it is so often as it should be), but it is also something that we can all practice just because we are all looking for a better quality of life. And it needs to be a focus. It requires the effort to be positive, but it can be done. It can fill the negative void that you can leave behind if you desire to.

So it goes, we all have our bad days and our good. We all have the opportunity to spread the kindness of life, the happiness of living, the spirit that God has provided and we can choose to use!  Communicate it every day, the good news (in my faith it is the Gospel). Stay away from the sadness and anger that is so easy to share through all of the communication methods we have today.  They serve to decay your daily living until you are not alive.  I thank God I am alive to share the good news. I have another day to choose to do it. Will you?

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