Managing Anger

When I was taking Physical Geography lessons years ago, I didn't pay much attention when my Geography teacher at Sekolah Menengah Dato Haji Hussein, old Mr M. Mahendran, taught the whole class about volcanoes.

Any how, I remember him talking about the two kinds of volcanic eruptions and lava flows.... The first one is called the 'pahoe- hoe' flow (like the ones found in Hawaii) and the second one is called the 'aah-aa' flow (like what happened to Mount St Helens, located somewhere in the west coast, in the northern part of the American continent.... or, as the history books wrote, the famous eruption of the 'Krakatoa' i.e. a volcano which is no longer existent in one of the Indonesian islands).

The conclusion that I made after hearing his lecture was that, it's better to have the pahoe-hoe flow rather than the aah-aa flow because it's not that 'dangerous'.... As I get much older I tend to associate anger with these two kinds of lava flow: the easy to handle kind of anger (the pahoe-hoe flow) and the volatile and disruptive kind (the aah-aa flow).

It's normal to get angry. Everybody gets angry once in a while. People get angry if things don't turn out as expected or things happen not up to their expectations. It's how one handles one's anger that makes a difference.

Some people vent out their anger and sadness by talking it out to friends or someone whom they can trust. It's good that we let the frustration go out in little packages. It's a lot less harmful when compared to keeping it all to oneself and the moment you can't keep it any longer...burst it out on innocent people (like what happened in the shoot out in one of the campuses in the USA last month).

When one feels angry, if you're standing up.... try to sit down. If one is standing up, try to lie down. If one still can't shake off the angry feeling, go and perform the ablution. Better still, take a good long bath. That's what my late Dad did each time my siblings and I got into a fight when we were small. He didn't ask what the matter was. The first question he always ask was that if we had taken a bath yet, which we answered in the negative.... So, following his orders, we paraded obediently to the bathroom and, since we were cool headed after that.... all the fighting was quietly resolved.

Syaitaan love to make mischief and cause agony to human beings. Iblis himself has asked permission from Allah SWT to sway us from the right path. He had vowed to bring us with him, the descendants of Adam a.s., to hell, which will be his (iblis') final abode. These mischievous unseen beings can travel through our blood system. When we get angry, our blood is pumped (and travels) faster in the blood system and hence we have a tendency to raise our hands and legs to hit out at others or to trigger the M16 or do things of the kind.

Knowing the history of the creation of mankind helps to put us in the correct state of mind. Better still, pardon all your enemies. You will live a more comfortable and easy life once you've done that. Ar Rasul SAW said it's not those who have a good physique that are considered strong but those can actually control their anger....