Introspection: Anger, Grief, and Malfunctioning Electronics

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Anger, Grief, and Malfunctioning Electronics

While I kept silence, my body wasted away

through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;

my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,

and I did not hide my iniquity;

I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,"

and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Psalm 32:3-5 (NRSV)

Now I'm older and I feel like

I could let some of this anger fade

But it seems the surface I am scratching

Is the bed that I have made

From "Fade" by Staind

For me, the beginning of the year has been marked by anger and frustration.  Lately I've felt that things in my life just keep going wrong, as if I have my own personal rain cloud hovering right over my head.  Truth be told, the things that set me off are closer to mild annoyances than tragedies or grave injustices, but they still make me angry.

I've tried to dig down to the root of my anger.  I've wondered if maybe stress might be part of the problem.  I'm prone to stress in general, and, when I worry about something or feel that there is a lot of pressure on me, I tend to become rather irritable.  I've also wondered if maybe the post-holiday letdown, which I am prone to experiencing, might be partially to blame.  After the excitement of Christmas and the optimism of New Year's Day, I have to return the day-to-day grind once again.  Amid frustrations and disappointments, I start to realize that very little has changed since last year.

I occasionally attend half-day retreats with a local contemplative prayer ministry.¹  During these retreats, when the participants gather around the table for lunch, they share what God has been teaching them over the last two months.  At the retreat I attended earlier this month, I confessed that I had been feeling rather angry lately.  One woman seated at the table with me suggested that what often lies beneath anger is grief.  What she said made a lot of sense to me, for I tend to stuff down what's really bothering me and then explode over trivial matters.

I would not say that my life is on an upward trajectory right now.  For the last few years, I've felt stuck, as if my life isn't going anywhere.  I worry that my best days are behind me, and the good things in my life just don't seem to last long enough.  Because I feel powerless to change my circumstances, my impulse is to rage against them, but, in reality, anger offers little more than the illusion of power.

When I delivered my most recent sermon, I confessed, before my church, to an act of violence I committed against an electronic device ten years ago.  A few weeks ago, I started listening to a podcast on my phone, and I noticed that I could only hear it in one of my earphones.  I've always had bad luck with earphones, so I never invest in any good ones.  Instead, I buy cheap ones and replace them as needed.  Assuming that another pair of cheap earphones had come to the end of their life, which I have come to expect, I tore the wires apart and threw them away.  When I tried another pair of earphones, I still heard the podcast in only one ear, so I began to think that there was a problem with my phone.

If I had listened to the podcast for just one more minute, I would have realized that the problem was not with my earphones or with my phone but with the podcast itself.  Whoever edited the podcast made a mistake and played the introduction and the opening music on only one side.  The rest of the podcast played in stereo.  I destroyed a perfectly good pair of earphones because I had not properly assessed the situation.  I automatically kept assuming that the news was worse than it was.  Maybe my anger is connected to my general outlook on life.

For someone who works with computers for a living, I seem to have a disproportionate number of problems with my electronic devices.  Two common sources of frustration in my life are my smart phone, which is currently reaching its engineered obsolesce, and my off-brand tablet, which does not have the memory requirements to properly run the software I need for syncing my phone.

To be honest, my malfunctioning electronics are not the source of my anger; they only bring it to the surface.  I just think that, amid my generally stagnant life, the very least consolation life could offer me is to let my electronics work properly.  My mother recently suggested that I buy a new phone and a new tablet in order to get some of the stressors out of my life.  I then came clean and admitted the source of my frustration.  I said that, if I bought a new phone and tablet, I would still be the same loser with better gadgets.

The reason I'm stuck is that I don't feel like I have what it takes to get what I want out of life.

The tapes playing in my head keep on repeating, "Not enough."

I've found that confession really is good for the soul, because, when I admit what is really bothering me, my anger seems to subside.  I've noted previously that I'm trying to cultivate a sense of self-worth this year.  My goal is to be able to say, with conviction, "I am enough."  What I have not mentioned is that, in my quest for self-worth, I hope to gain some self-confidence as well.  My struggles with anger are just more evidence of my need for such things, so I must continue the work I've started this year.


Notes:

1. http://www.theanchorage.org/

The photograph of the earphones, which was taken by Charles Rondeau, has been released to the public domain.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.