ANGER

ANGER

Let not be found among you one given to incessant anger and rage, for in your anger you cloak the gentle nature of your good self with a mask of fear and horror that young and old cannot bear to stand.

Your gentleness is your anger masked, and your mean and untoward color given an endearing and humane face. From the same spring your gentleness is found to rise for the good of many, is that same spot your anger often erupts to the distaste and turning away of many.

Be careful in your quickness to display anger lest it carve deep into your being, for more bitter than the asps is the poison of it, ruthless than the most dreaded acid is its canker in eating up the totality of the fabric of life.

And what are you to be likened to in your anger?

It is for you to be eaten up by a canker living in your very soul with the consuming swiftness by which the weaver drives his loom into the shuttle.

It is for your soul to be an orifice through which venom bitterer than serpent’s is being dispersed daily to the ruin of yourself and fellow humans.

It is to lose your head, becoming swallowed up in the flood of your own compulsion and emotions, even as many a great swimmer have been found submerged in irony by the perils of familiar waters.

Be not so acquainted with your anger as to deem it fit; need it be said to you again that the very undoing of the strong swimmer is not the lack of strength but in his very acquaintance with the waters, casting off restraint.

And when you are angry, look deep into your heart for that escape your gentleness can avail you. For is not the same bowels whence the bee brings forth its deadly poison that the same honey of healing is being secreted for the benefit of many?

And what are you in your gentleness?

It is the removal of the graffiti of anger and hate for the appearance of a warm and endearing spirit, even as the clearing out of the old hay by the farmer makes room for the springing up of a new growth of fresh grass.

It is to always look deep into your heart in dire moments of anger for that escape which your gentleness cannot fail to avail you.

It is also for you to keep your head in all things, above the very waters that have flooded to ruin the lives of many given to quick flashes of anger in their spirits.

And also to give that which is sweet about yourself rather than the bitter, for better are you than the common bee who is helplessly bound to give both the bitter and the sweet.

And in keeping yourself from all anger let there be absence of harshness of words and wrathful tongue, for in the harshness of words is the stoking up of strife, setting ablaze the work of patience done in gentleness by hosts of endearing generations.

Some are quick to say among you: ‘anger is greater than gentleness, with others saying nay, gentleness is the greater than anger’. But I say unto you both are indeed strong but the power of anger lies in destruction while that of gentleness is in salvation.

Remember also that both are inhabitants of a common dwelling, and when you are engrossed in conversation with one on your porch, the other quietly awaits you at the backyard.

Both are eager callers at the door of your heart, but let the wise know which of them to pay heed, for anger is found at residence in the bosom of fools!

For truly and verily are you suspended always between your anger and your gentleness like a scale, and only when you become empty of life can you be said to be at total balance. But in so much as life consists must you be found in the rising by your gentleness or held down by your anger.

When your anger is listless, then is your gentleness quiet and when your gentleness is in expression, then is your anger at total calmness.

Be not moved out of your gentle station by words of annoyance spoken in response to the folly of a wrathful and provoking tongue. Know well that in the calm response to a provoked spirit have great errors been found laid to rest.

And where the teeth of dogs and hammers of men have proven futile, the power of a gentle tongue has been found to break the toughest of bones.