IF I am to be honest, anger was a stranger to me all of my life in the sense that I never gave it too much thought.

It wasn’t that I didn’t get angry at anything, of course I did, but I wasn’t aware of the different aspects to it so I suppose I was a bit one-dimensional in my approach to it.

Sticking with the honesty approach, I always assumed it was a negative emotion, that brought nothing but harm to one’s life and that it was something to be avoided at all costs.

In fairness I suppose it is hard to blame me as it seems to be an emotion that has got a lot of bad press, especially when we hear of our court system regularly sending perpetrators of the law to anger management courses.

On the SHEP (Social Health and Educational Project – a self-help course run in Cork) that I completed, my eyes were opened up to the many different aspects to anger and to say the least, I was pleasantly surprised as to what I discovered.

Discovering new things about oneself and about the world can be both extremely liberating and exciting.

I suppose the key to unlocking this is the same key that unlocks the word in italics above i.e. assume – you see when we assume something it can make an ASS out of U and Me and I for one was certainly fooled by the emotion anger.

I will never forget the day that it was questioned; I can still clearly remember my reaction. Someone in my group had the audacity to suggest that anger could possibly have any other connotation in life other than being a negative emotion.

I thought that this was a ludicrous suggestion, but fortunately for myself and my standing in the group, I managed to stay silent and keep my mouth shut and my opinions fervently locked up. I listened to what was being said and the more I heard the more I listened.

It was suggested that anger need not necessarily be a negative (bad) emotion and that in fact if used in a correct manner could in fact be a positive emotion. I could actually feel my eyebrows lifting!!

Yes it was a time of mind-crisis, deep confusion and explosion as I had first to get my ever-logical mind around the possibility that something could be both positive and negative.

There are many examples of this in nature in the sense that water is an essential part of our survival (positive) and yet can cause such tragedy (drowning and destruction – negative).

Another example is how True Love (positive) has broken many a heart (negative). Sometimes logic has simply to go out of the window and we simply have to accept that there is more to this when we dig deeper.

The philosophers of old were very aware of the different aspects of this emotion and it begs the question of – how often have we been told if we want to learn something new to examine our history – which sounds like a total contradiction in itself!

Let’s look at the great man himself.

The philosopher Aristotle certainly thought that anger was good for a person. In the “Nicomachean Ethics,” he wrote, “the man who is angry at the right things and with the right people, and further, as he ought, when he ought, and as long as he ought, is praised.”

But Aristotle didn’t have to live in a world where newspapers linked anger to heart disease.

I certainly for one have learned a lot of about anger and in a strange  way have become an admirer and a friend of this powerful emotion.

For the moment, all I will say it is something to behold and at least it shows us to be alive because if we were dead we certainly would not be experiencing this emotion.

It is great to be alive!

All I will say for the moment, is that what I have discovered is that anger has many aspects to it but that it always better expressed than suppressed.

However, don’t worry, I do agree if one is to express it – It should definitely be done in a controlled manner!!

Next week I am going to write about Anger continued.