Hi dianavan--I'm right on the same page with you re: getting angry.

I think most of us experience anger as the most energetic of all our emotions. At least I do. That energy is power. Like all power, it can be wielded for a useful purpose. Like all power, it can be used indiscriminantly (I absolutely can not spell anymore--don't know if I spelled that right or not) and be ultimately self-defeating. Like all power, it can be discharged randomly, leaving behind nothing but chaos.

When I am angry, I try to remind myself that anger belongs on the bus, but not in the driver's seat. If anger is in the driver's seat, it will at least take a wrong turn, and will often run into a ditch. It is not uncommon for the bus to wreak. With me on it. And I forgot the seatbelt.

Martin Luther King Jr. chose to direct his anger at the systems that supported social injustice instead of directing it at 'Whitey.' The effective power of the civil rights movement was due to the ability of him and other leaders to take the energy generated by the anger of his people at the social injustices they endured and focus it in a deliberate way to effect social change. He used that energy to turn anger into power equal to the power of money and used it just as deliberately to influence public policy. He rejected stereotyping, and was careful in his public actions and utterances to refrain from stereotyping Whites. He pointed his finger at systems and institutions, not at people. In doing so, he raised the consciousness of a nation. Clearly he did not harness all of that energy. I don't know that he wanted to. When young, angry, disenfranchised blacks rioted in the inner cities of our nation, the blind and indiscriminant explosion of their anger caused terrible damage to the businesses and infrastructure of their own communities, but the fear those riots generated, in combination with a greater and more refined use of that energy was quite effective.