C: So… is that what you guys do all the time? Sit around and talk about life?
B: You could say that. What do you usually do with your time?
C: Get angry, mostly.
B: Why do you do that?
C: I don’t exactly do it. It just happens. I mean, look around. There are thousands of things that come together in this delightful symphony of fuckery. I simply can’t help but get angry.
B: That’s interesting.
C: Is it really.
B: Sure.
C: Why do you say that?
B: It’s always interesting to pay attention to how people describe the world. Your description of the world almost always betrays more about you than it does about the world.
C: So what do my descriptions tell you about me?
B: Well, I don’t know anything for certai–
C: Cut the crap, man.
B: Fine, but take all of this with a pinch of salt. They’re just impressions. And the same caveat applies: These impressions tell you more about me than they tell you about you.
C: Uhuh.
B: Well, you’re an angry person.
C: No shit.
B: I think what’s more interesting, actually, than me trying to describe what kind of person you are– as though people can be described– is for us to spend some time thinking about what anger is.
C: *snorts* You’re making me angry!
B: *smiles* C’mon, let’s just walk through this. You spend so much of your time angry, how much time have you devoted to figuring out what anger actually is? Are you really okay with being angry all the time? Is this how you want to spend your life?
C: I don’t know. Doesn’t feel like I have much of a choice.
B: That’s a legitimate feeling.
C: That’s an odd thing for you to say.
B: It’s odd to you, probably because you’re not used to people telling you that your feelings are legitimate.
C: Okay, fuck the feelings talk. Tell me about anger.
B: *laughs* Well. First of all, anger is a pretty old emotion, or force, or whatever you want to call it. People say that there’s a wide range of human experience, but there are some states that pretty much everybody spends all of their time in. Fear. Hunger. Desire. Anxiety. Jealousy. Anger. Apathy. And so on.
C: Uhuh.
B: Well, anger’s pretty old. Think about why it exists. If you were the only person in the world, it never quite makes sense to get angry. Anger is when you lose control. You become irrational when you’re angry. You’re willing to damage and destroy things, including your own things, including yourself. It’s a sort of scorched Earth tactic, that says “Don’t fuck with me”.
C: Heh, you said the F word.
B: I had a wise teacher once, who said– I don’t have a problem with swearing, I have a problem with the dilution of swearing. If you use it all the time, it ceases to have any weight. You swear when you really need to. Otherwise every problem is a crisis, emergency.
C: Ugh, wise people.
B: I think anger is fundamentally a sort of social negotiation tactic. It says “I won’t back down, even if I get hurt or die.” Angry people are scary, because you don’t know what they’re going to do. You can’t reason with them.
C: I’m not a very scary person. Hell, I wish I was. Nobody’s afraid of me. If people were a little more afraid of me and a little less full of shit, I’d have a lot less reason to be so fucking angry all the time.
B: I’m getting there. The root of anger is a sort of relinquishing of control. Anger is about retaliation. It’s about being offended. It’s about feeling violated. You describe yourself as angry, but that’s a form of shorthand. Anger is what happens to you because of some prerequisite conditions, which is what we really ought to be talking about. it might be more accurate to say… you’re a person who feels violated and offended. You want your boundaries to be respected but they aren’t. You feel like you don’t have control in your life.
C: That is offensive! How dare you! *laughs*
B: I’m sorry, but think about it. People get angry because they lost control. If you’re in control, there’s no need to be angry. In a way, anger is the recursive, amplified losing of control. The final act of “fuck it, I’m angry!” is a sort of, “If I can’t control it, I’ll fucking destroy it” mentality.
C: You’re saying a bunch of words that make me nod my head, and feel a bit angry, but you’re saying that’s because–
B: You don’t feel like you’re in control of this conversation. I’m talking about something personal to you, in a space that you’re not used to sharing. If you’re uncomfortable, we can stop, or talk about something else. Like what a weirdo A is.
C: Hahahaha. Uh. No, tell me more.
B: There’s not actually that much to say. You probably have a history of feeling like you’re not in control. Maybe it’s school, maybe it’s family, whatever. And you’re not used to exercising your will to get what you want, in a way that makes sense to you. Have you ever seen a child losing at a game he doesn’t quite understand, and then he just topples all the pieces on the board?
C: *looks away* uhhhh…
B: C’mon, we all do it. Most games are stupid.
C: *laughs*
B: The problem is that you can’t just keep doing that. You can’t keep destroying the board. I mean, you can, but it becomes a very frustrating, painful way to live. And you don’t really build or accumulate anything of value, that you can be really proud of. I mean, why did you come to talk to me?
C: A told me to.
B: Right, and you do everything A tells you to do?
C: *shrug* No, of course not.
B: So why did you come to talk to me?
C: I guess I heard him raving about how awesome you were, and I wanted to see for myself if he was full of shit.
B: So what’s you’re verdict?
C: I don’t know yet. People inevitably disappoint me.
B: They will.
C: So aren’t I justified in being angry?
B: I never said you weren’t. You can justify absolutely anything you like. I ain’t judging ya. You do whatever you like, madam. It’s your life!
C: You’re not very helpful…
B: Well, I never actually said I’d help you. And you never actually asked for my help.
C: Touché.