Tag: anger

From First Gear Straight to Fifth

September 9th, 2026

My son, Hans, called me. Hans is an Iraqi War vet (2011 deployment). He likes to talk to me about his work (he pumps concrete for a living down in Texas). When we chat on the phone, the conversation always drifts toward military topics. Both Hans and I are veterans, and we have a mutual understanding of how the Army works. We share some common experiences.

Hans was lamenting how he sometimes loses his temper at home. Hans attributed his fits of anger to his time in the Army. He described it to me this way:

“Dad, I watched this video with a psychiatrist talking about how we get trained in the Army. This stuff isn’t just about guys with PTSD. Anybody who has spent a minute in the military is taught to deal with a problem right away. Now, some civilian, he might gradually react to different levels of stress. He might go from first gear to second to third to fourth and then to fifth gear. We go right from first to fifth! You and I are trained to deal with bad shit. We don’t know how to handle small stuff anymore.”

There is some truth to that. If you have been a soldier, then you are taught to have a “sense of urgency”. You deal with problems as if they were matters of life and death, because sometimes they really are. I remember when I was in flight school learning how to operate a helicopter. I got drilled over and over again about how to deal with emergencies in flight. What do you do if the engine quits? How to you handle a tail rotor failure? What if a hydraulic line breaks? When these things happen, there isn’t time to ponder your options. You do something and you do it right fucking now.

Hans noted that in a crisis situation we tend to act quickly, and somehow, we usually do it calmly. I can remember, back in 2009, when I got run over by a forklift at work. The 8000 lbs. lift crushed my right foot and ankle. I screamed “fuck” when I got rolled, but after that I felt no emotions at all. I was aware that my leg was trashed, but I just stayed put and waited for the EMPs to come and throw me into the back of an ambulance. I can think of other traumatic situations where I just did whatever needed to be done, without really thinking or feeling. Afterward, I was a mess, but not during the crisis. It was almost like I was more of an observer than an active participant when things went sideways.

It’s the smaller issues that trigger us. I used to freak out when our kids would spill a glass of milk at dinner time. For years, I was a rage-aholic. I would go off the deep end over petty incidents. I could deal with the stuff that needed me in fifth gear, but I continually overreacted to the little things.

I told Hans that it gets better as you get older. It’s not that I am any more patient than I was years ago. It’s just that I no longer have the stamina to be constantly outraged by life. I still lose my temper, but I don’t have the energy to maintain that emotional state for more than a couple minutes. Often, after I blow up about some piddly thing, I feel sick and exhausted, sometimes for up to an hour.

I have found that mediation helps with the anger. It allows me to slow down while I deal with stress. I still can’t always shift through the gears in the correct order. But I can do better than I used to do.

Anger

July 26th, 2025

“And there’s always a place for the angry young man,
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.
And he’s never been able to learn from mistakes,
So he can’t understand why his heart always breaks.
But his honor is pure and his courage as well,
And he’s fair and he’s true and he’s boring as hell
And he’ll go to the grave as an angry old man.”

from the song “Angry Young Man” by Billy Joel

I lost my temper yesterday morning. My wife gave our little grandson, Asher, French toast for breakfast. He tends to be a fussy eater, but he’ll eat French toast, if it is made a certain way. Yesterday, there was a problem with it. Eventually, I had a problem with it too.

Asher likes his toast with honey, syrup, and vegan butter. These three toppings need to be added to the French toast in a certain order. Yesterday, Asher put a spoonful of organic honey on his French toast. Then I poured a bit of organic syrup over the honey. Then Asher suddenly realized that he had forgotten to apply a dollop of something that looked like butter on the bread. There was a crisis.

Asher cried out, “I didn’t put the butter on! I forgot! Now, I’ll have honey all over my knife!”

My wife tried to console him. She suggested that he flip the bread over and try the sequence again. He did that, but that just meant there was honey and syrup on both sides of the toast. Karin got him another, pristine slice of French toast. There was something wrong with that one too. Asher was upset and yelling.

There was a back-and-forth conversation between Asher and his Oma that continued without any resolution. Asher refused to eat, but my wife kept looking for ways to appease him. Finally, I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I slapped my hand on the table and stormed out of the kitchen.

Anger has definite physiological effects. When I got mad, I could feel my face flush and my heart race. The stress hormones were doing their thing. What I noticed the most was the aftermath. Once the emotional storm had passed (it probably only lasted two minutes), I felt exhausted. I was a bit lightheaded, and my joints hurt. I was shaky.

For many years, I was a rage-oholic. I was angry almost all the time. When I was younger, the anger used to energize me. It got me moving. It often got me moving in the wrong direction, but I was active. Now, that I’m 67 years old, anger wears me out. It’s too much work to stay pissed off. I still lose my temper. I guess that I always will, but I can’t maintain that intense rage. My body won’t tolerate it. I have mild hypertension, and I don’t need to have a heart attack. Asher and my wife don’t need that either.

Many years ago (it seems like everything in my life was many years ago), I participated as a facilitator in a program to help families with troubled teenagers. In one session of the program, we talked about feelings. The program tried to distill a plethora of emptions down to just four: mad, glad, sad, and scared. The idea was to get people to recognize their feelings and maybe handle them in constructive ways. “Mad” was the big one for me.

I am a product of my generation. When I was growing up, males were not supposed to be sad or scared. My father belittled me if I ever cried. Showing fear was frowned upon. If I couldn’t be sad or scared, then almost every emotion got funneled into being angry. That’s what my dad did. That’s what I learned to do. Being angry has not done me much good. It hasn’t done much good for anybody around me. It’s been highly destructive.

I have been told that there is such a thing as “righteous anger”. The notion is that there are times when a person can be enraged about injustice and oppression, and that sort of anger is a positive thing. I suppose that it is, but I have never experienced it in a pure form. My anger has always been tainted with ego and selfishness. If righteous anger exists, it is exceedingly rare.

I’m not so angry anymore. Why? I’m not sure. Years of Zen meditation has helped. Learning how to cry and feel sadness has helped. Understanding and accepting at least some of the world’s suffering has helped. Growing old has helped. I was an angry young man. I’m too tired to be angry old man.