How do you keep from getting mad?

Subject: RE: How do you keep from getting mad?
From: kendall
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 02:07 PM

Bottled up anger is poison. It must be purged. When I lose it, all I can say is "Stand from under"

Subject: RE: How do you keep from getting mad?
From: catspaw49
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 02:16 PM

Stand from UNDER??? STAND FROM UNDER??? Is that like 'stay out of the way' or 'watch out for the fallout' or something? STAND FROM UNDER??? Geeziz Kendall....sounds like an erection or something...........

Spaw

Subject: RE: How do you keep from getting mad?
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 02:21 PM

I don't, I let it come, but usually try to channel it into something productive like writing or housecleaning. Specific to the Mudcat, I usually PM to a trusted friend or two and vent to them with a great big "thank you for listening."

Using anger as a motivator for my writing is what got me into writing as a professional. I'd get angry about some issue, write a letter to the editor (this was over 25 yrs ago) and eventially was asked to provide a column and articles for papers. Then I had to learn to write regardless of what mood I was in, but I will always remember using it in that way. I also feel some of my best poetry and essays come from a feeling of great emotions, several of them from anger or a feeling of impotence about a given situation.

But, Bonnie is right about Spaw and his humour, although she runs a close second.

kat

Subject: RE: How do you keep from getting mad?
From: Naemanson
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 04:14 PM

Kendall is just quoting a sign he once saw in an outhouse. I saw that sign myself. As I remember it was on the ground floor of an experimental two story outhouse...

Subject: RE: How do you keep from getting mad?
From: Naemanson
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 04:18 PM

That outhouse, as I recall, was an experiment based on something my cousin Jeb saw in the big city. He hadn't ever seen a pay toilet before and when he got home he thought he'd try the idea out. In a flash of brilliance he decided to double his money by building a two story monument to the almighty dollar and a person's needs. The experiment didn't work though. It was a good idea but the overhead got him....

Subject: RE: How do you keep from getting mad?
From: kendall
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 06:37 PM

Good answer Naemanson! I'm surprised that a sailor resisted the urge to tell the truth though. "Stand from under" is a nautical term. It means get the hell out of the way. Good advice if you are standing under a cargo net full of cannon balls.

Subject: RE: How do you keep from getting mad?
From: kendall
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 06:40 PM

There are many interesting terms used at sea..such as..UP BEHIND..spaw, take a minute to wallow in that one.. Avast! up behind means let it drop..avast means stop. you should have learned that from Popeye.

Subject: RE: How do you keep from getting mad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 07:35 PM

I hate feeling cross. I quite enjoy being angry sometimes. The kind of things that crop up on the Mudcat sometimes are irritations more than anything else.

I enjoy heated disagreements between friends. Most of the stuff on the Mudcat falls into that category. In Maisie Ward's biography of GK Chesterton she writes about him and his younger brother Cecil: "As soon as Cecil could speak he, began to argue and the brothers' intercourse thencweforward consisted of unending discussion. They always argued, they never quarrelled." I think that is what we should aim for, rather than trying to avoid the things about which we do not agree.

I tend to think of anger as a sort of furnace inside that keeps on getting stoked up by the irritating things that happen. Every now and then something happens where you need to turn up the heating, and the furnace means you can f0 do that. But most of the time it's just there in the background.

And I suspect that to some people that may sound very unhealthy. Never mind, it's only a metaphor, like most of the things we say about ourselves. And I can't really imagine that I'd ever see the Mudcat as a place where anger as such can be useful.

Subject: RE: How do you keep from getting mad?
From: JamesJim
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 11:13 PM

Most of the time I use "logic" to keep from getting angry (this drives my wife nuts, as it does several other members of my family and friends). I like Zig Zigler's take on "kicking the cat." I figure that someone has kicked the person who is making me angry and he or she is just passing it on. Usually anger subsides in a short time, if you will just let it. Of course, please notice the word at the beginning of this paragraph - "Most." Sometimes I lose it and just kick the hell out of any "cat" in sight. Everyone has limits.

Jim