Acharya Prashant: Deep within we authorize ourselves to be fully angry and destructive. Superficially, to keep up with social norms and moral pretense, we tell ourselves that anger is unjustified and uncivilized and needless. But in spite of such admissions, anger keeps recurring. It is because the source of anger not only remains intact within, but is also continuously fed and supported by us.
It’s like feeding the root, and trimming the shoot. The tree may at best appear pruned and limited, but would nevertheless, have all the energy and vitality and power of its powerful roots, roots that are being fed continuously.
How do we justify our anger? We justify our anger by feeling short-changed, by feeling cheated or victimized. By continuing to assert that we are incomplete, while simultaneously bemoaning the incompleteness. If you have grudges within, if you feel a victim of situations, or past, or persons, and if you lend credence to all these stories of victimization, it is not impossible to not to be angry.
How can you be a victim, and still not be angry? How can you be a loser, and still not be angry? How can you feel cheated, and still have no anger? But want to maintain all the hurt, all the wounds, all the bruised identities, because they give us a moral upper-hand, because they make us feel superior.
You say, “O! I am the one who has suffered so much in the past because of others.” “Oh! I am the one who has been duped and deceived by the world continuously.” “See how much I have sacrificed.” “See how morally superior am I.”
