I just saw a social media post titled “How to Never Get Angry” followed by some tips. The tips themselves were fine, but the title was way off. Why would we want to teach people never to get angry?
Anger has a bad reputation. People talk about it as though we should never feel it and we certainly should never act on it. Neither of those are true. There are times when it’s not only reasonable to feel angry, it’s right to feel angry. If you’ve been wronged, treated unfairly, or provoked, you should get angry. In fact, I would be far more worried about someone who didn’t feel angry in those circumstances.
That said, we all know that anger can get out of hand. How you handle it, though, is different from whether or not you feel it. Again, it’s ok to act on anger too. You just need to act on it in the best way (which depends on the situation).
