How long do you like to stay angry? Or hurt? Is 90 minutes enough, or do you need a few weeks? Do you find you can cool off after a run and a shower, or does sleeping on it help? I once stayed angry for 18 years, I’m sickened to say. Sure, it hurt the person I was angry at all those years, but the life force that got shut down was mine. The person who, for 18 years, was learning to hate rather than learning to love, was me. The person whose power of choice was vetoed by a grudge was me.
So what did I learn in those 18 years, beyond abasic understanding of the Periodic Chart and some Russian literature? I learned to shut my heart, my true self, down, and say I was too damaged, unattractive, fill-in-the-blank for love. I learned how to use my pain as both a crutch and a weapon. And mostly, mostly, mostly,...I learned that hurt and anger can build some awfully strong walls.
I’m only recently beginning to appreciate what a damaging series of lessons those were.
There’s always a lot going into any situation that long-lasting, but one thing I’ve been looking at lately is the way I felt that, by holding onto my grudge, I could protect myself from being hurt again. As if I could armor myself with my anger.
And the thing is, it felt real to me -- it felt like I really did need to keep that anger alive, or I’d … I don’t know. By the end, I’m not sure it was about a whole lot more than habit and a fear of having been wrong all that time.
So if armoring ourselves with our anger/hurt/pain isn’t the answer, what’s the alternative? Well, I’m no expert, but I think it starts with accepting that shitty things happen in life, and that we have the choice to let them define us or not. We can choose to create, feed and nurture the toxic anger, or we can strip off the armor and open our hearts to compassion in the face of the pain.
That’s kinda terrifying; I get it. Truly keeping compassion alive when all you want to do is drop a bomb on the whole situation takes real strength and courage. And it takes faith in yourself. It takes faith in life itself.
But it can happen. You can change. In my experience, it’s a change that occurs in your body, in your energy centers, in that place behind your sternum. Being mentally open and allowing is a crucial first step, but this doesn’t happen cognitively, in my experience.
It’s possible to breathe your life force back into that tight, locked, frozen place right behind your sternum and choose to live with compassion -- for others, certainly, but mostly for yourself. Because that armor cuts both ways: when we wall off our love or compassion for the one who hurt us, we make it harder to access that love and compassion for ourselves, and for anyone else who might come into our lives.
Try it now. Breathe into that space behind your sternum, into your lower belly, into your tailbone -- can you feel the locked and frozen places? Can you feel the cold tightness with the HazMat warning sign? Can you imagine what it might feel like if, instead of fear and tension and emptiness and toxic sludge, those spaces were open, filled with light, and could breathe?
They can be. On that, I do get to claim some expertise. Those spaces don’t have to remain the locked off chambers of our souls, slowly draining us of life force and the capacity for joy.
I never imagined it was possible. After 18 years of true vigilance, I was positive that was just the way I was and would forever be. I have never been so happy to be wrong.
Shutting out love is just not worth the price you have to pay. Please believe me. Please believe that you are strong enough to love. That love itself is strong enough to keep your heart alive through whatever hell life offers you. Because once you’ve shut down, let me tell you, days quickly give way to years. And, even though you always have the ability to choose a different path, you never get those years back.