Projecting Your Anger to Somebody Else

Earlier I received an email from my brother. He said he had asked permission to go home early from work today since Mom called him at work, crying and sobbing. Dad had yelled at her again and accusing her of not being supportive. My brother couldn't take it anymore. When he was home, he yelled back and asked Dad what he meant. He asked Dad if any of us (Mom, me, brother) had ever been disrespectful to him. He said no, but other people had been that way to him. Other people had disappointed him and made his heart hurt. If you're new here, I've written down a post earlier about my Dad. Here's the link: Dad.

The situation got heated up so my Dad asked my brother to call my Priest. So my priest came over and they got into a discussion. I don't know the details but my brother said that at least they could talk about everything they wanted to say to one another. I sure hope that my Dad'll be better later on for the sake of everybody, including himself. It seems that he's been so caught up with his own pains so that he doesn't even know he's hurting his loved ones. All he can see is his own wounds and pains.

My brother's email makes me think hard. How many times have I ever projected my anger to somebody else? How many times have I ever projected my feeling of embarrassment to somebody else? How many times have I projected any bad emotions to somebody else?

Let me end this post with some anger quotations taken from Wisdom Quotes:

Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power, that is not easy.
- Aristotle

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back -- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
- Frederick Buechner

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
- James Thurber