Moment of Truth

As I get older I find that the first part of my life was spent separating ideas into generally original or “out there” and cliched. What’s shocked me recently is that as I continue to grow and mature in myself, my ideas, and my faith, a lot of the cliches I’ve spent time establishing as such are cliched because they’re true!

The one I’ll touch on in the following is the idea that insecurity breeds anger.

I’ve spent a good part of my time flinging around a lot of “righteous anger” at what I perceived to be the shortcomings, flaws, and agitations of man and his everyday life. I can’t say that all of it was misplaced, but most of it turned out useless. Bare with me, I’ll explain through example.

If you’re driving your car and you come up on some guys riding their bikes, it always slows you down. Even when the cyclists are riding single file and as far off to the side as they can traffic is always interrupted. Now, when you get angry at the bikers maybe you say “Damnation, I have places to be! Get on the sidewalk you inconsiderate jerks!” but what you really mean is “my ass is getting bigger by the moment as I drive around this money guzzling contraption and damn your fit-minded self-discipline for slowing me down.”

See, a person who is totally secure with themselves doesn’t project anger at these situations, at worst they may become frustrated or sad, but not really angry. Like “oh, I’m going to be late. I should have left earlier” or “I wish these guys were doing there thing in another part of town today.” Our insecurities are the fuel that feeds the furnace of malice, have no doubt.

I often encountered this within and without on my path of abstinence from drugs and alcohol.

Someone might say, “I hate it when you’re obnoxious about the ’straight edge’ thing!”

What I might here is “I’m jealous that you’ve chosen to retain the ability to shed your inhibitions at will without an expensive beverage to serve as a catalyst.”

I’ve always found that those who even want to talk about my substance related convictions in a sarcastic or negative light are those who bare some insecurities about their own alcohol or drug use. Those who are perfectly content and unabashed about the time, amount, and circumstance in which they drink or use drugs never seem to bring it up.

Some that know me might know that events have occurred in my personal life recently in which I learned a valuable lesson about my own self-proclaimed “righteous” anger . Since I’ve  gone through this recent change I’ve found that situations in which I used to become angry with people or situations involving alcohol now have little effect on my mood, or at their worst, contribute to a kind of sadness or disappointment rather than anger.

You see, my anger stemmed from my insecurities which were disguised as hardened convictions. I really looked into a bar and was insecure about my ability to understand what went on there and, on occasion, maybe jealous that I was left so alienated on the outside of what seemed like a lot of (maybe mindless) fun. Now that I’ve gotten some of those insecurities in line and shed my anger, I realize more than ever that the choices I make are the right ones and I don’t need anger as a support to uphold those morals and convictions. The outcome is that when I see somebody being self destructive or irresponsible in their choice to drink I simply feel this sort of sadness or disappointment. Not just in them but in myself, wondering what I could be doing to make things better instead of just allowing my insecurities to cast blame on everyone else.

I’m very thankful that life turned the cliche of insecurity and anger into a lesson in truth for me. I recommend everyone think more about why they’re angry and research their own insecurities. People, on the whole, are never going to change. We are simply left to change how we choose to respond to them.