WE GOT OUR FATHER'S ANGER

The moment I get a call from my father, I consciously calm down my senses, not to let free of my anger. The premeditation arises from the need to win over the spontaneity of your anger handed down to you, you think, by your father, as well as the monotonous conversation and the questions you answer.

“Had your lunch?”

“Are you sleeping well?”

“Did you talk to your sister?”

So, why did you start premediating your answers, inhaling and exhaling, before attending your father’s call? And you trace back your anger, also your father’s, and to your surprise, his father didn’t even raise his voice to his son. You were relieved that rage is not hereditary and wondered where your father got it from.

Till you got to the stage of misdirecting your anger on someone as your father did at your mother or you, all you know about anger was not to physically assault a woman that would make her smell like a pain balm. And that crumbled when you realized that you could inflict similar damage without touching her and her still smelling the same. So, you take back the self-pat that you gave yourself, thinking that you haven’t got your father’s violence. Again, you trace its origins.

Until you started working, you always wondered why he gets angry about petty things at home.

Because he couldn’t outrun the routine where he toiled hard in the prime of his youth to earn peanuts just paying for education and healthcare, and a day off or two spent even contemplating that he got to repeat it without even a small win for himself that would make him content.

You think about drawing a parallel to understand your anger but deem it unnecessary, as you always wake up in a mood to rage, aware that you will do the work that doesn’t collide with any purpose or makes you happy. And you misfire your anger in every direction possible, from being mean till the day breaks and answering calls with an irritated indifference.

Those random days when you didn’t feel angry at the exact questions and answered them effortlessly showed you the placard that this is the easiest way you can rage on and sit up quietly on the others.

All the rage built from the monotonous, time and soul-exploiting labour never really simmer down in the occasional outbursts you direct at your loved ones, strangers in traffic, and the waiters/waitresses who left their homes to seek a job just like you. It’s just a momentary relief that would again prepare you for the cycle without kindling in you any rage or resistance towards the routine that made you such in the first place. It has paralyzed you in such a position that you start to believe that you can only escape this by working harder for your company or your boss, thus making you praise the hustle culture.

The monotonous work you do raising the stakes for somebody and not getting the deserved materialistic or psychological reward for yourself. Most of your time is spent around people who always think and talk about their work, which even they are not fond of. Also, add to it the absence of an immediate community where you can share and support each other’s interests. When you understand all your rage branches from your tiring routine, as did your father’s, you become conscious of how you let it out.

You realize all your anger, as your father’s, was not spontaneous but was burning and burning without an outlet to explode. And from that day, you started the premeditation, the urge not to deplete the resources of your rage.

So, what do you rage on, and how do you liberate your confined anger? You rage through resistance, through protest against the very source your anger emanates from.

It can be as simple as forgiving your father’s anger or understanding that you and your colleague are just in an endless maze, trying to overpower each other while in your every fumble and progress, you are turning millionaires into billionaires as you stay hustling forever.

And you start to unleash your rage on what feeds your anger and not on soft targets. You do it through what you read, write, paint, discuss, practice, protest, or stand in solidarity with.