Originally posted on Facebook HERE
I took the shot from a different angle today. Sometimes it pays to do that – look at things from a different angle. I’ve been blogging for almost two years now, not sure if the garden shed has ever made it into the photo. It’s always been there, though. We get so comfortable with what we know, how things are done, our small frame of reference, that we start to think the way we look at life and do things is the only way, or the “right” way. Truth is there’s many many ways to look at almost anything and any situation we have going on. And so every once in a while, God will throw something at us to challenge us. You’ll know when it happens, because we tend to react without thinking when it does. My issue in this regard, and I’ve written about it before – is anger. I’m an emotional person, and that’s something I’m actually totally fine with. You usually know if I’m happy, sad, angry, whatever – it’ll be fairly clear when you’re with me. Because of this, I can be quick to have an emotion overtake me, whether it be happiness, gratitude, fear or anger. Sometimes I wonder why anger always seems so close to the surface. I have a lot of irons in the fire with my work, writing, talks, music, trying to maybe do something every now and then with the family, etc – and that creates some stress. There isn’t enough time to get to everything I’d like to do in the timeframe I’d like it done. So, I think this is where it becomes important to have times built in to just relax and blow off steam. For years, music was this outlet for me. People who have seen me play have asked me why I’m so angry all the time, and certainly when I’m playing in a rock band like Road Trip there’s a certain intensity I bring to the performance, and yes – in many ways it’s fueled from the same part inside me that anger resides in. I’ll be playing drums at a couple shows coming up soon, and I’ll tell you – drums are great for getting aggressions out as well. I’ve had a couple situations this past year now where anger just welled up quickly inside of me and came out before I could step back and get calm. Neither situation was pretty. Neither situation was bad enough to justify the intensity of the response I gave. It’s funny, but when you have a confrontation with someone from that place where anger resides, it can affect things for a while, maybe forever, in that relationship from that point on. And if we overreact, guilt and shame can often be something we’ll start to carry with us after the fact. So it’s not just the one incident, but it stays with us. I’m really trying to look at my life, and maybe from a perspective I haven’t tried before, because I don’t want anger to ever be so close to the surface I can’t control it. Maybe by looking at things differently, I’ll find a garden shed full of love within me and I can learn to smile when anger wants to well up and respond from there instead. We’ll never know what we’re missing if we never look. Everything can be looked at from many different angles.
