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The other day, after mowing the yard, I found myself laying down to stare at the clouds, green(ish) grass pricking my skin all over, something hard and uncomfortably protrudent making a nuisance of itself at my lower back. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant thing. It was supposed to be. But let’s face it, life aint like the movies. It was more like singing in the rain, or sex in the ocean. It’s supposed to be great and romantic… but it’s more just something you do so you can talk about it later. (And here it is, later, and here I go, talking about it. Self-fulfilling prophecy.)

There is, amongst all the unpleasantness in getting there, something profoundly settling about staring at the sky. It’s simply hard to remain angry while gazing at the eternity of void above ourselves. Winnie the Pooh didn’t curse out Christopher Robin while laying back on that rocky alcove and staring up at the summer’s end. Nor did Timon and Pumba get in a huff while gazing at stars with Simba. Bad examples, sure… but, whatever. So, while I stared at the sky, I found myself calming, muscles loosening, tension easing. And I realized, that I was profoundly, overreachingly, completely, and totally angry.

Not the rage that fires up quickly and dies in shame. More the deep, burning, boiling, upset-of-stomach that neither goes away, nor really ever finds need to explain itself. Being, as I was, in a contemplative mood, I decided to dig deeper. Anger is not a natural thing to me. I am relatively slow to respond to emotion, both negative and positive. I like the trodden path of “eh”ishness. It’s calm and simple, and gives more time to observe the world as it spins. So finding a simmering resentment in the depths of my soul that would not respond to sky-staring, I was intrigued. What did I have to be so angry at?

And it turns out, alot. In fact, alot doesn’t even begin to cover it. Once I started tracing its roots, I found a whole glowing nuclear meltdown of radioactive waste left by this-that-and-the-other. And, perhaps most surprisingly, I liked it. Because anger keeps us balanced. It reminds us that life isn’t fair, and just the act of being human will usually end in tragedy. But that’s okay. Because we get to be angry about it.

So I smiled, stood back up from off the ground, found that stupid little rock that had been so irritatingly digging at my butt, and tossed it gleefully into the street. You see? Anger. It motivates good things.

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: “Angry“