I gave some things yesterday, but mostly what I felt was pissed off. I’m not talking about irritation or annoyance; I’m talking about white hot rage. Rage that you feel in your body, rage that’s tight and suffocating in your chest and your throat. Rage that rises up into your head and eyeballs until you think they might explode. Rage that demands an object even though its energy is so much bigger than any one thing or person you could pin it on. Rage that makes you want to kick and hit and scream. Rage that even once you’ve done that, wants more.

My anger is big and wild. It has a mind of its own, an alter ego James calls Edna, the bitchy housewife, but who I think is far more vicious than that. People always say you have to feel your anger, get to know it, make friends with it. But honestly, I’m not sure I really believe that. Or maybe I’m unwilling to try because the fear is so big. Or maybe, I simply have no idea what that looks like for me.

It felt hard to give yesterday. Mostly, I just wanted to be angry, to kick and scream and yell. Giving felt like such a stretch, a Herculean feat to shift from a posture of closed down-ness to one of openness and offering.

It got me to wondering about the relationship between giving and anger. How do we relate to the former when we feel the latter so strongly?

Sometimes, I give as a way to cover over the fact that I’m pissed off. I think, “I’ll be sweet, do something nice for someone, then no one will know what I’m really feeling. Then I will feel better.” But what am I actually giving when that is my intention?

What would it mean to offer from that place that is angry, hurt, electric? What would it mean to offer from exactly where I am, rather than trying to shift my mind to what I think is “better,” “more virtuous,” “good”? Maybe I could give even though I’m pissed, but without attempting to change that: I’m angry, I’m giving, I’m still angry.

Katie and I were talking about tonglen yesterday and about how doing this has made us both think about the idea of exchange. Relating to my anger makes me see that when I try to cover over it and pretend I’m giving out of kindness, there’s no exchange happening. That’s just me trying to be someone I’m not, that’s me not seeing myself or the other person. And that feels shitty. Deeply deeply shitty.

I don’t want what we’re doing to be about do-gooding. I feel self-conscious about the fact that it does feel like that sometimes. And that’s okay, I guess. Doing this is a tool; it’s helping us train in this way. But what I really want is for this to be about exchanging, offering, just being human. I want this to be about getting to know myself in new ways, about getting to know others from a place of genuine humanness, and meeting somewhere in the middle.

I guess that means that Edna might be coming out some more…