Angry reactions to others can make us wrong even when we’re right

By David McElroy · May 7, 2013

I caught myself acting like an angry jerk the other day. I don’t like myself when that person comes out. It reminds me too much of some things I grew up with — and of things I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to escape.

It really wasn’t a big deal. It was just a few seconds. Nobody else would remember it. Few would have noticed when it happened. But it’s stayed with me since late last week, almost taunting me like something from the past that I thought was dead.

I was driving down a busy road near my house last week. I think it was Thursday afternoon, but it might have been Friday. There was a car trying to turn left out of a business, so the driver had to turn across a lane of traffic to get to another one. Instead of waiting for a time when traffic was clear in both directions — or turning right and then turning around — he instead pulled out and blocked one lane of traffic completely while he waited for the other lane to clear so he could pull out.

What he did was rude and against all traffic rules. He ended up holding up quite a number of people for 30 seconds or so, which seemed a lot longer while it was going on. But in the scheme of things, it wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t in the hurry. It didn’t affect my life one bit.

But I was angry. He was violating the rules. He was cheating. He was holding me up. I blew my horn in righteous indignation.

It didn’t do any good, of course. My lane was blocked. Then it was unblocked and we moved on. It made no difference, but I was left angry and very unhappy with myself.

Why did I have to judge in this case? Why couldn’t I simply have accepted the situation as it existed and waited for it to resolve itself?

I can’t say for sure, but I have an idea. I grew up in a family where we weren’t allowed to have opinions different from those of my father. If I had a different thought than he had about something, I learned to keep it to myself. He would judge me harshly and I might even end up in trouble for having a different thought. It didn’t matter what the subject was. It could be music or humor or pretty much anything. So I grew up feeling angry at not being listened to and feeling very judged by someone else.

When I became an adult, I was finally able to show my frustration with people, but it was difficult. I was afraid to show disagreement, because I’d never been allowed to do so in small ways. So I still kept it bottled up, but would eventually get mad enough to be extremely angry in ways that I didn’t like.

It wasn’t until four or five years ago that I understood that some of that behavior was a shadow of what I’d experienced from my father. In my own small way, I was emulating him. And I constantly felt attacked — even over small things — so I felt that I must respond to everyone who I perceived as wronging me. As a result, I got into ugly online flame wars with people. I occasionally raged about other people in real life in ways that were out of proportion to the reality of the situation. I didn’t like what I’d become, and a great part of it came from the insecurity I felt. I was still acting as though those other people were all my father judging me.

I had to do a lot of work on myself to try to change that. In most ways, I’ve changed the behavior through very intentional decisions not to be that person — to overcome the training I got as a child.

Every now and then, though, I see just a slice of it again. Just a very tiny slice. That’s what happened last week. In the past, I felt justified in the way I felt and acted. Now, though, it makes me sick when I see even a hint of it, because it’s not who I want to be.

When it came to the basic issue last week, I was right. The driver of the other car was completely wrong. He had no right to do what he did. But by letting myself be so invested in judging him — and feeling wronged — I became the one who was wrong.

And now I have to accept a related truth. I’ve grown tremendously over the years when it comes to this issue, but I’m still not perfect. The Buddha is quoted as saying, “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” So if I continue to judge myself and beat myself up for letting the shadow of an old pattern show itself, I’ll be wrong in yet another way.

So the best I can say is that I’m still terribly imperfect. I always will be. But I’m trying really hard not to judge you or myself. Sometimes it’s very difficult.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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