Word about a new study that shows anger can be a head-clearing, positive emotion came as wonderful news to me. My wife has long accused me of being “an angry man,” which is true, because there are so many things to be angry about.
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She isn’t one of them, of course. In fact, it’s a placid home life that gives me all the free time I need to be angry.
She did, however, have the formerly meek me starting to believe that I had an anger problem — to the point that I considered wandering into an anger-management session just to see if there was anything there for me. Fried dove, perhaps.
But this new research changes that.
The study, by Wesley G. Moons and Diane M. Mackie of the University of California at Santa Barbara, showed that anger, long known as the mental goon that makes otherwise normal people cut someone off in traffic and then jam on the brakes, isn’t always such a bad guy.
They found that sometimes anger can make a person more analytical and clear-headed.
An example: When I recently called what I assume to be India for a third month in a row to cancel my online music subscription, I was determined not to accept a simple assurance that my credit card would not be assessed $14.95 yet again for a service I no longer used. I had fallen for that last time.
Reasonable Ross had passed the baton to Angry Ross.
Normally a mumbler, I sounded like a superhero: Trial Attorney-Man. It was as if every injustice ever done on Earth was wrapped up in this one phone call to the outsourced customer-disservice department.
Yet, even as I made it clear in English and, I think, Hindi, that I no longer wanted this service, Ravi started to explain all the benefits I would be passing up.
I stopped him.
Normally willing to believe that the person on the other end of the phone is an innocent, I wasn’t buying it this time: “I’m trying to tell you, with all clarity, that I don’t want this service anymore. No more. None of it. Stop! And I want a refund.”
Ravi balked at that.
Then I asked his last name, so I could give it to the CEO when I called the next morning, but he refused to comply. He did, however, become suddenly helpful.
After consulting for a moment with somebody in his office, he came back on the phone with the good news: My refund would show up shortly on my credit-card statement. Two weeks later, he was right.
Here was a perfect example of what the researchers were talking about: constructive anger. My anger had achieved a just end.
And it was this experience that led me to conclude that we need more constructive anger, that simply trying to negotiate life nowadays requires that we be angry enough to defend ourselves.
As another example, two formerly gentle Metra-riding friends of mine have discovered this same truth: The meek will inherit the Earth only once all the jerks are done with it. Thus, if you want the passenger next to you to quit talking on the cell phone while you try to sleep, tell him. He might stop.
This is the new anger management. Embrace it. Peace.
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