"Out of control" means "others control". "Self-control" is the perfect anecdote for all of the above."
Have you been keeping up with the news lately? What's going on with these angry men in sports? Last week, a high school basketball coach bit off the ear of an opposing coach after losing the championship game to his team. This week, a dad beat a middle school girls' basketball coach unconscious because he disciplined the man's daughter and another girl after they'd been arguing. The punishment was that the two girls had to run laps around the gym. Really? What the heck is going on? Are people really that angry? The answer to the question is "yes". People really are that angry, but when things of this nature take place, the anger most definitely comes from other sources. This type of anger is called "displaced". Certainly the coach wasn't that angry at the guy whose team beat his; he may have wanted that championship badly, but that fact that he bit another man hard enough for his ear to have to be reattached suggests there was more going on in his head than that. Running laps around the gym is a typical punishment for athletes who misbehave. That dad was carrying something else around with him and the coach found himself on the bottom end of it. No pun intended!
People are angry about life. Life isn't working for most, and there seem to be no answers. With no answers, people feel trapped, and that's when they become angry. When life doesn't work and people become angry, they look for someone or something to blame. When they find it, they place (or displace) their anger on their target, and end up unleashing it in a way that causes them to do something they regret later. The person who takes the blame doesn't really have to have anything to do with what's eating at the angry person: he just has to be in the right place at the wrong time. No one knows this better than President Barack Obama. This man gets blamed for everything. We've all had the conversation about how he's being blamed for things that were happening in America long before he took office. But regardless of what he proposes, the angry people in congress fight against it, totally and completely forgetting how their decisions are effecting the rest of the world. Worse than that, the angry citizens of the United States who oppose his presidency--and some who don't--hem and haw all day long about what he's not doing to make things better. They don't take the time to look at the fact that the economy has greatly improved from its status when he was sworn in. Why don't they look at that? Because angry people need someone to blame. They don't want answers or solutions. If there are solutions, then the responsibility of their personal failures, which is what usually causes the anger, falls back on them. It's so much easier to blame the president than it is to admit that the job was too much for you to handle. It's easier to blame the higher ups for hiring fresh, new, innovative people than it is to take responsibility for not going to the trainings and workshops necessary to keep up with the latest information in your field, which would make you a valued employee. At the time of their offerings, you probably saw them as a waste of your time. It's easier to blame the parent who leaves for all of the struggles of parenting than it is to take on the natural ups and downs of raising children, which is a parental responsibility regardless of relationship status. Why should it be all your responsibility, you ask? Because they are your kids, and they still have needs, and time isn't going to stand still while you find someone else to make life easier for you. Regardless of your situation, those kids are going to continue to grow and their needs are going to go away! Don't make your problem their problem. (I know. That's another blog. Single parenting doesn't have to be as bad as people make it seem. It is, however, a quick blame for a lot of people still angry about their struggles/breakups.) It's easy to blame your parents when your choices prove to have been the worse ones you could have ever made, and finally...it's real easy to blame "the white man" or minorities when, in all actuality, you really should be owning up to the poor life choices you made rather than preparing yourself for the life you were going to have. As a school counselor, I'd admonish kids over and over about the importance of getting an education and using it to prepare for life, instead of using school solely as a social network. Not enough of them listened. I also warned many females about having sex and having babies before they were ready. Many of them are now angry mothers who are finding it hard to make ends meet because they have extra mouths to feed. Of course, none of that is their fault. It's the government's.
All of us displace our anger/frustration at one time or another if we're not careful to keep things in proper perspective. The best way to keep our emotions where they should be is to own our stuff. If you screwed up, don't blame anyone else; work on or fix the problem. If you took a shortcut in life and found out later that you should have put more time into your choice, own up to it. "My bad. I shouldn't have done that. Gotta do something different" works. Taking it out on your mate, your kids, your parents, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc., doesn't. I have an ex-husband who still blames me for all his failures in life--even after nearly twenty years, two more baby mamas, a bitter divorce (he didn't marry the one after me; they just had a child together), and a new fiance! He blames me because he can't bring himself to see how the choices he makes effect his life. And sadly, when he can't blame me, he blames my daughter or his mother. (Oh, Lord, did I just mention him? That arrogant fool is going to see this as a "shout out"! He'll be walking around telling folks that I'm still in love with him. Well, just for the record, he needs to ask himself if I ever really loved him. I was young and dumb. Ouch!) He incidentally credits his menial child support payments for all of my successes, so he's an equal opportunity idiot! But rather than blaming him for my failed marriage or my single parenthood, I chose to raise my kids. I knew it wasn't their fault that I'd made such a bad choice. I married the sucker for how he looked to me, and because of that, I never looked to see whether or not we'd be able to make a life together, let alone be able to raise a family together. After less than five years and two kids, we broke up. Life had handed me lemons, but I made lemonade. Instead of focusing on the dissolution of the marriage and the impending struggle, I found the positive in it and hung on to that. That sucker sure made some pretty children. I took the genes and ran!!!! But still, I had to make another choice: was I going to be mad at them because their dad didn't stay? Not only "no", but hell no! I wasn't going to charge them for MY mistake. Those were my babies, and that was the way I saw it. I was their mom and would have been responsible for raising them well even if he had stayed. His leaving did not lessen my responsibility as a parent. As a result, our lives were not held hostage by his absence. The divorce was not the center of our household; truth, intelligence and integrity was, and still is. Our lives were not destroyed by a man who did the same thing to the two other families he made, but they would have been had I blamed myself, my children or anyone else for the choices I made. Single parenting was not that kind of struggle for me. I saw myself just as much their mom then as I do now, and trust me---I don't regret it (especially dumping his ass and running away with the genes). Because I owned my own stuff, my kids had a great start in life. And it all paid off. I'm quite proud as you can tell!
Life is not perfect for anyone. We all make mistakes and choices we wish later we had taken the time to think through. We all make decisions based on all the wrong stuff sometimes. What's crucial is how you handle the choice after you realize you made a mistake. Whether the outcome of the choice is good or bad, if you don't keep your emotions in check, you will destroy your own dynasty by displacing your emotions and placing energy (pride used wrong is just as bad as anger) where it doesn't belong. Another one in the news--John Ramsey. What if JonBenet had been able to be a normal little girl instead of an extension of her mother's fascination/obsession with beauty contests? But three cheers for John. He's owning his role in all of that as he speaks about his feelings about kids and pageants, and it's helped him to heal and move on. He is now remarried. Take it from him and me: the only way to recover and move on from any mistake or bad choice is to OWN YOUR SH**!!!!
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