When I was graduated high school, my parents presented me with a tiny green pocket version of "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Graduates." I read through it all in a hour (it is a small book) and several times again over the following weeks and months. It had a lot of good pieces of advice in there. But as years have passed and I lost my copy in moving, I can only remember piece of advice because it resonated with me so much at the time.
It's okay to be bored.
At first I thought that was a strange thing to have added in, but as I transitioned more to adult life, I realized how important is was. We're told when we first spread our wings to fly to follow our dreams and live the life we want. But, as much fun as it isn't , no one can do that all the time. I enjoy living in a clean house. I don't like doing chores, but I make and cook food, wear clothes, and work on projects that have me spreading items all over a desk or table. Not to mention the other people living in my house. In order to enjoy my nice clean house, I occasionally have to the dirty work of laundry and dishes and cleaning out the fish tank.
Even with a happy, well-fulfilled life, sometimes life gets boring. And that's okay.
Then an amazing thing happened. When I realized that it was okay to be bored, boredom didn't happen as often. I still had mundane tasks to do, but instead of spending the whole time mentally complaining that I had to do it, and no one else was helping out and it was so dull, I thought about other things instead. Things like new story ideas, things like how the houses peeping out from the trees on the hill across from my kitchen window look kinda like fairy houses in twilight. Things like how washing machines are amazing, and when we accidentally had a magnet in the pocket of some pants that wiped the washing machine's sensing chip, the technician was able to play a tune over the phone that reset it by sound waves. Awesome, right? The thing is, I stopped being bored so much. It does still come back from time to time, especially in waiting rooms, but it's not so overwhelming. It's as if all Boredom needed was for me to acknowledge its existence, and now can happily go its own way.
But, as you may have noticed, the post title is on anger. That's because last week, I got angry, really angry at my computer. I actually broke the screen when I hit it, but my husband got a new gaming laptop out of the deal. Anyway, I was working on a family newsletter, but the formatting of the template was being so horrible. I kept working at it for almost an hour trying to get the stupid thing right, and as I worked, I got more and more angry. First it was simply frustration at the template, then anger at not being able to get Microsoft word to work for me even though I know I know how to use it. Then anger at myself for my apparent lack of computer skills. Then anger because it was late and I was tired, and I just wanted to be done. Then, worst of all, the pernicious creeping cycle of anger at myself for being angry. And that tight angry circle grew and grew for over an hour until I hit the screen of my computer in sheer frustration. Then I realized I had broken it, and all my work was apparantly lost anyway.
Then I was so furious that I screamed out in wordless, vowel-filled rage until my husband woke up and was able to calm me down. He told me that it was all right, that he wasn't angry, disappointed or upset that I had broken the screen in rage. Then he told me something that, had I realized it an hour ago, could have saved my laptop. He told me that it was okay to be angry, and that once he had realized that he stopped getting as angry and having outbursts.
I realized the truth in his words because I had experienced it before with boredom. And I realized that most of my anger had come because of the anger, disappointment, shame, and guilt I felt in myself for getting angry. If I could have realized that it's ok to be angry, my rage wouldn't have had that fuel and wouldn't have need to grow out of hand for me to accept my very real and very necessary human emotion.
My society and culture had conditioned me that it's not okay to be angry, or to show any negative emotion. Women especially are expected to be cheerful, upbeat, calm, and loving everyone. Anger, even understandable anger is a terrible thing. We are supposed to be able to control our emotions. But the thing is, controlling doesn't mean suppressing. The more I tried to suppress my anger, tried to tell myself that I wasn't supposed to feel that way, the more angry I got. And why not? Anger is as valid an emotion as any other, and a perfectly acceptable way to feel about things. It's okay to feel that way. I don't need to be upset at myself for any way that I feel. Like boredom, like any emotion, anger needs to acknowledged, felt, experienced fully before it will go away. And it is so much easier to feel that emotion without breaking anything if you don't have guilt of feeling like you're inherently flawed for feeling. Feeling is good. Hopefully it doesn't take a broken screen and a hurting hand for me to realize that next time.
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