It's Time to Let Go of the Anger
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them."
The above is a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the most notable Soviet dissident in history, who spent his life contemplating his accountability of landing in a Russian Gulag. Imagine that - suffering the ravages of a 1940’s forced labor camp, for the heinous crime of writing derogatory statements about the handling of the war by Joseph Stalin in private letters to a friend and then spending your days contemplating your own fault in the matter. Me? I think I would have spent the rest of my life in anger. Good thing for all of us Solzhenitsyn was a better human than I. He wasn’t holding onto anger, and because of that we are graced with arguably the most important text in modern history and quite possibly the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Anger is all around us. You can feel it lingering in the air like a thick fog apple pie and cinnamon spice incense blasting you in the face as you walk into a Hallmark store. Pedestrians praying they make it across the street while utilizing the necessary crosswalk, if only they can dodge the frustrated early morning commuter who is trying not to spill their over-priced coffee in one hand while blasting some faceless imbecile on Twitter with the other. Ill tempered, exhausted dads in line at the grocery store, tapping their foot in irritation at the lack of speed at which the retiree in front of them is sorting through her wallet. “Can’t she hurry up already? It’s not that hard to divvy up $50 from a Social Security check to pay for a single bag of groceries!”
Or the classic example I recently witnessed in the airport while catching an absurdly early morning flight. A disheveled mom, with sleep still crusted in the corners of her eyes, making her way against traffic in the security line to yell at the TSA agent, “You just let an entire family go through the expedited line because one of them was in a wheelchair! Yet, you wouldn’t let us pass through that line with our stroller? A stroller is no different than a wheelchair and we just came from a funeral, not a wedding!” To which I can only imagine the person with no legs in the wheelchair saying to the ghoulish, predawn bitch, “Oh yes, life from this wheelchair is much easier than my days as an infant, with my mother pushing me through the park in a stroller.”
As if things weren’t melting down adequately enough in our culture over the past several decades, usher in Covid and the “powers that be” decide to shut us all in our homes, close our businesses and refuse to allow our children into schools. Mandates concerning our healthcare soon followed and the world essentially cracked into two equally angry mobs.
I was personally front and center in the free-thinkers mob (of which I’m still an active leader) and I was probably angrier than most. After being forced to hire a teacher for my daughter and her best friend so their educations didn’t suffer, being forced to cover my face in public (but hey-I could buy a Louis Vuitton fabric safety device and consider it high fashion, right?) and being discretely harassed by our local hospital for my social media posts and podcasts, I was certainly angry. Add to that my husband being faced with the prospect of losing his career as a physician for refusing to deny the efficacy of his own immune system and actually practicing sound medicine (you know the kind that treats individuals as individuals-not sheep in a pharmaceutical company line-up). How dare he question what bureaucrats and bootlicking, box-checkers in white lab coats were forcing down his throat? Angry doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt in the early days of Covid. Murderous, vicious, crazy-eyed, bloodied-face, Joan Crawford-ish rage is more accurate. I spent countless hours fighting with anyone who didn’t agree with me on social media. I blocked relatives, spat insulting, personal loogies online at people I once considered friends and even fought with my own husband who I was actually standing up for. As for anyone foolish enough to vaccinate their children with mRNA, I viciously touted, “They will get exactly what they deserve” and relished in satisfaction of being right, as more and more evidence came out that vaccine injury was a far greater risk to children than the virus itself. Shamefully, I had become as vengeful and wicked as the crows on The View. I was filled with anger. Or was I?
I had fallen prey to what I like to refer to as the “easy button” of emotions - anger. It is so much easier to get angry than it is to feel sorrow. Sorrow requires us to be vulnerable, anger only requires ego. Sorrow is not the same as sadness - it goes well beyond simply feeling sad or disappointed. By definition, sorrow is a feeling of deep distress caused by loss, disappointment, or other misfortune suffered by oneself or others. I wasn’t angry after all, I was filled with sorrow. Distressed over what I could see happening to the world around me. Panic, arrogance, narrow thinking, loss of freedom, indiscriminate rule-following and a surrender of critical thought unfolding everywhere. I wanted to shake people and yell, “Wake up! Why would you suddenly and so hastily turn on your own intuitions and on your friends?” Only instead of expressing my sorrow, I took the easy way out and got angry. As did most everyone.
As time passes, and more and more evidence comes to light that the way in which the world behaved in response to Covid was wrong, it would be gratifying to bask in “I told you so.” As those who chose to get vaccinated now outnumber the deaths of those of us who were to blame for the “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” it would be easy to be even angrier than before.
-President Biden, December 16, 2021
Anger is what we are seeing everywhere. There is still an incessant division grounded in anger, and it isn’t helpful. Being angry is not going to open the discussion for respectful discourse, nor is it going to allow anyone else to admit they were wrong. If you think attacking others is going to bring them closer to the truth, you are sorely mistaken. Vulnerability is required for healing. The expression of sorrow is our only way to a better culture.
Don’t get me wrong, I have not forgotten all the heartache and devastation people caused my family over the past several years. I have not forgiven the spineless members of my husband’s group who piled onto him in an effort to shut me up and get him to toe a line he was much too intelligent to tow. I have not forgiven the corrupt “powers that be” who divided us, lied to us and convinced far too many people to trust them when they have proven time and again they are untrustworthy. I haven’t forgiven the healthcare industry for robbing people of unbiased healthcare services and informed consent. I haven’t forgotten the countless companies who stripped their hardworking employees of medical freedom by threatening their livelihood. I haven’t forgiven, nor have I forgotten anything - I’m just no longer angry. I’m willing to admit my sorrow.
Just the other day, my husband came home to tell me that one of his partners told him he was sorry. He was sorry for the way in which he acted during the early days of Covid (which led to my husband being removed as the Director of Interventional Radiology and removed from the Board, by the way). My husband was emotional as he told me this and asked me why he felt so emotional? I responded to him with this, “It takes humility and vulnerability to admit someone hurt you. You were never actually angry, you were sorrowful. You were heartbroken to find those who worked alongside you for 20+ years, turn their backs on you so nonchalantly. It is easy to be angry, it isn’t easy to admit sorrow.”
This is what I will tell all of you, as well. Anger appears to have replaced sorrow to a great extent in our current culture. Guilty as charged - until most recently. Whatever instance in your life you find yourself feeling angry, ask yourself the deeper question, “What is causing my sorrow?”
I feel a tremendous level of sorrow for what the world has gone through collectively in the past several years. I’m not angry at people for buying into a lie, I feel sorrow they bought in and are still doubling down by refusing to seek truth. I am distressed by the fact we can no longer trust a medical system whose practitioners chose compliance over oaths. I feel grief over the loss of critical thinking in favor of ideology. I feel sorrow for the many lives that were devastated and the division we are ever more causing each day. I feel deep sorrow for a world rife with anger.
I have chosen to no longer engage in the anger. Sorrow will take me much further. Try replacing anger with sorrow and see where it takes you.
As I reflect on the unimaginable suffering Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn endured throughout his lifetime, before his passing in 2008, I have the utmost admiration for him. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel anger, he was just willing to admit his sorrow.
I can’t believe I am about to say this, but it’s time to stop being so angry.
Great Article, Eve ! Thank You ♥️ All should read!