Why does it feel like there’s a lot of anger constantly brewing just under the radar in so many throughout this country? Has it always been there and people simply overlooked it? Or are people growing more and more restless, irritable, and discontent with their lives and are looking for some person, place, or thing to blame for it?
I ask these questions, because I just got done watching a very introspective and somewhat controversial Spike Lee movie titled, “BlacKkKlansman”, which depicted true events that took place back in 1972 in Colorado Springs when the first African-American detective in the police department there sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. What makes this biographical crime film somewhat controversial though is how it ends by showing the tragic events that unfolded around this time last summer in Charlottesville when white civil rights activities and counter-protestors clashed and concluded with a car attack that ended in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
As I left the theater, I had those images of bodies flying up in the air from that car smashing into a crowd and people bashing each other with fists and weapons stuck in my brain, which led me to cry. I muttered in the process a small prayer and wondered if God was disappointed with the state of our nation, as it seems like acts of anger continue to show their ugly faces more so here than anywhere else as of late.
What’s sad is that I can’t seem to escape this anymore. I’ve seen a huge uprise of anger through the use of racist comments, even in the very area where I live. People seems like they are on such short fuses. If they’re not angry at the president and saying choice words about this administration, they’re angry at someone else or some sect of society they feel is the problem.
But what they don’t realize is that the problem is not “out there” in some person, place, or thing, it’s in them. The anger, resentment, restlessness, irritability, and discontent they live on a daily basis with is not because of the world around them, it’s because of them. Yet, they don’t want to see that. They don’t want to see that they have been swallowing some poison over and over and over again, by holding onto all that anger.
Instead, they’d rather resort to using racist words like “Faggots”, “Niggers”, “Spics”, “Chinks”, and plenty more to base their anger on, each weighted with verbal ammunition that’s meant to inflict much damage and pain. And as those types of words fly from their mouths, it not only continues to make them spiritually sick inside, it also perpetuates the very problem that seems to keep growing in this country, one that Spike Lee suggested in his film has never gone away and is merely finally coming to the surface now.
I’m inclined to believe Lee might be right, as all one needs to do is read or watch the news over the course of a single week here to see how dark our country has become. A few weekends ago in Chicago alone there were 66 shootings and 12 deaths and there have also been 154 mass shootings in the United States so far since the start of 2018! Sadly, both numbers are probably only going to increase as the year moves forward, all because of this restless, irritable, and discontent nature that keeps leading people to be filled with high levels of anger, rage, and resentment.
Believe me when I say I’ve been on the receiving end of some of this with a number of people in my own neck of the woods. I’ve seen hatred fly at me with such velocity that if it had been weighted in metal, I’d definitely be dead. Yet, because of the understanding God’s given me, I realize that hatred is not about me whatsoever, it never was. I’m just a temporary mirror for someone to throw their anger at, so they can keep on buying into that illusion their ego is telling them, that if only I’d go away, they’re life would be better. Yet, even if I did go away permanently, their life wouldn’t be better, because someone else would eventually just come along and cause their anger, their restlessness, their irritability, their resentment, and their discontent nature to return.
The same goes true for any single human being in this country. No one’s anger isn’t going to ever permanently go away no matter who is president, no matter who is getting away with what, no matter what rights are or aren’t being protected, no matter whether things like abortion is still legal or isn’t anymore, and no matter what injustices appears to have been done, as none of that is the problem. All of that is just stuff out there too many of us place our focuses on and think “if it would just change and be the way I think it should be” than life would be grand. But it’s a lie and our egos keep trying to convince us otherwise. Because even when those anger-producing things go away, meeting what our ego secretly or not-so-secretly desired, another one always surfaces, making our ego miserable all over again, and causing our anger to return once more.
I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be angry at anyone or anything “out there”. I don’t ever want to become someone who feels the need to violently protest or spew words of hatred towards another or think that my dissatisfaction in life will go away if some person, place, or thing changes to meet the way my ego think’s something should be.
I’ve come to believe that the answer is within each of us. I’ve come to believe that the healing is within each of us as well.
It deals with forgiveness.
It deals with acceptance.
And it deals with unconditional love.
Three things the ego fights viciously against because it means buying into the notion that we’re the problem and not someone or something else.
Whether you choose to believe this or not, so long as you continue to go on thinking that revenge, violence, acts of racism, or hatred-filled words are the solution to any of your anger and misery, you will sadly go on remaining a very angry and miserable person the rest of your life. Consider forgiving, letting go, loving, and accepting everyone and everything, just as it is, even when it hurts, and you will probably find your anger, misery, and discontent nature starting to finally go away, helping to heal our country in the process, from something that Spike Lee merely touched upon the surface in, with his film “BlacKkKlansman”.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
