I don’t really know if anger is a good thing or a bad thing.  Perhaps anger itself is neither but what we do with that anger.  If it moves us to change ourselves and take action against some kind of injustice it is a good thing.  If it just makes us bitter then it is not.  Anger towards someone who is not treating us okay can tell us that we need to try to fix that relationship or perhaps get a lot of distance from it in some circumstances and that is a good thing.  However, if we just let it well up and it makes us unfairly unkind to them or to others then it probably isn’t.

There are lots of things that make me angry.  And sometimes it leads to good things but probably more often if doesn’t.  I can be very unfair when I am angry and don’t always make wise decisions.  I hope and pray that I can use my anger towards these things to better myself rather than become bitter.  Anyway here are some, I have decided to limit it to ten things.

At the moment something that makes me angry a lot is machismo.  It is everywhere in the world but very bad here in Peru.  I am angry at how little men help in the raising of their children and in the care of their homes.  I am angry at how often they are unfaithful to their wives or violent towards them or unfairly jealous and controlling while they do whatever they please.  I am also angry that women still don’t have the right to chose the way they wish to birth their children but I have said that often enough.  Not to mention when men whistle crudely from their cars at women including me I so often want to stick up my finger.  I haven’t yet but I think it will happen.

The kids at the primary school make me angry when they are violent with each other.   I got really angry one day when they were violent towards a lizard that had made it’s way into the classroom.  I also get pretty frustrated when they don’t listen to the instructions and then keep asking me what to do over and over.

Sometimes I get angry at Nina too which I don’t feel good about.  Mostly it is when I ask her not to go into the kitchen or not to put something in her mouth eg sand or dirt or something else she has picked up off the ground and then she does it anyway even when she has totally understood me.

I get angry at hypocrisy.  When people say one thing about themselves and then do the total opposite it makes me very mad.  It makes me mad on a world scale and on a daily basis I get angry at people in my own life’s hypocrisy.  I get especially angry at my own hypocrisy.

Injustice of course is infuriating and racism.  When I see people with so much ripping off people with so little it makes me angry.  It happens a lot in the whole world of course but I see it fist hand here in Peru and it is seriously ugly.

I get angry when people are late.  Of course five or ten minutes is not a big deal but people here often leave others waiting for hours.  The school had a presentation for Mother’s Day and it started 1.5 hours late.  I was very cross.

I also get angry at Martin much much more than I should.  There are times when it tells me I need to deal with something but I often behave very badly when I do.  It seems when I am angry my reptilian brain takes over.  I want to learn to control my words more when I get angry rather than saying mean things that aren’t really true.  Lucky for me he is wonderful and very forgiving but that doesn’t make it okay.

I so often find myself stark raving mad when I have to deal with some organisation eg Centrelink or the bank or the phone service and they leave me waiting for hours then send me here or there and then back to where I started and still have not sorted my problem.

Unkindness makes me very angry too.

I hate been patronised.  I feel very angry when it happens.  It doesn’t happen a lot to me thankfully although some people get patronised a lot.  I should do more about it.