Lets Go Anger. A few months ago, while waiting for the Q32 bus home, I read those words off the back of a dusty delivery truck. They had been scrawled into the dust with a finger, it looked like. Lets go anger. Given the population of New York, it's hard to say if this was an ESL slip or a rallying cry for anger, much like the Bronx bombers, Let's go Yank -ees! Let's go an-ger! It could also have been a message of peace, simply missing a few filler words - Let go of anger. I began to wonder, of course, who had scrawled the message in the first place. Was it the driver of the delivery truck? A Buddhist vigilante? An indignant soul? Was the driver of the delivery truck an indignant Buddhist vigilante?
Living in New York, one doesn't really have to try to be angry. You'll find plenty of opportunities to feel angry should you so desire. Given the amount of anger one can experience internally and externally on any given day in this city, it seems hard to believe that someone would feel the need to create a chant for anger. On the other hand, not feeling anger can be just as harmful as feeling too much anger. So, perhaps this message on the back of the delivery truck was in support of feeling your feelings, whatever they may be.
Feeling my feelings is a relatively new experience for me. I used to be able to squash them, tie them up neatly with a bow, and store them in my inner closet that never gets cleaned. "Don't cry outloud", I used tell myself. "Just keep it inside. Learn how to hide your feelings, dear girl." This worked for a time and quite nicely, I might add.
But then, therapy happened. I wasted a good year in therapy resisting the urges that were becoming ever more frequent to feel my feelings. Having been raised in an environment where none of my feelings were correct or justified or understood, it was much easier to just stop feeling them. If you choose not to feel pain, nothing hurts.
But then therapy keeps happening. And soon, before you know it, you're feeling all sorts of things. Pain, oh the pain. Time marches on and you start thinking all these feelings are good for you.Your therapist will delight in hearing this. If you throw in some tears they'll be in nirvana.
I think an indignant Buddhist vigilante therapist scrawled that into the back of the truck.
