“I’m packing you an extra pair of shoes and your angry eyes, just in case.”
If you have ever seen Toy Story 2, you will recognize Mrs. Potato Head’s words. She intuits what Mr. Potato Head needs to help rescue Woody from Al, the greedy owner of Al’s Toy Barn. She instinctively packs shoes to help with the long journey and his angry eyes, just in case he needs them. (Just for fun, check out the extended blooper reel . . . do it for the monkeys!)
The fact that Mr. Potato Head has a set of angry eyes, just in case he needs them, provides a nice lesson about anger. Many people today don’t know how to use their anger. Just scroll through Twitter or the comment section on almost any YouTube video and you will see that we live in a world with a lot of angry people.
The misuse of anger that we see in our contemporaries may make us think that anger is always bad. But in fact, getting angry can be a reasonable and virtuous act. Anger is an emotion which is trained by our habits. Even Jesus gets angry when he sees the moneychangers and the merchants thieving in the Temple (cf. Jn 2:13-22). Sometimes the healthy reaction in a situation is to get angry. The more virtuous habits we cultivate, the better our emotions become at helping us respond to what happens to us. Nevertheless, we know from our experience that getting angry is hard to do well. Our habits can be good or bad, and this affects whether we use anger well or poorly. What may start out as a justified reaction can easily become overblown and disproportionate to the offense.
Columnist David Brooks analyzes contemporary issues with anger in his book How to Know a Person. His analysis maps on well to the traditionally recognized causes of anger. Brooks argues that today’s anger issues are caused by the breakdown in social relationships. He notes that Americans have fewer close relationships than they did in the past but are more invested in global, large-scale political communities. This phenomenon leaves us largely unfulfilled socially and tends to result in loneliness. Brooks argues that social disconnection warps the mind’s grasp on reality: “People who feel unseen shut down socially. People who are lonely and unseen feel suspicious. They start to take offense where none is intended.” Lack of strong, intimate social relationships plants seeds of distrust in a person. All of sudden, we think that the only person we can count on is ourselves. We are more vulnerable to feeling offended or slighted (ST I-II, q. 47, a. 1). This feeling spirals into anger because in our isolation we become insecure in our abilities. At the same time, we are overconfident in our own excellence and are threatened by anyone who might eclipse it (ST I-II, q. 47, a. 3). The result is that we are more easily hurt and less resilient in the face of adversity. We spend our energy correcting the perceived slights and disrespect which distract us from living a rich, full life, shared with others.
Our social habits, such as prioritizing alone time, spending more time on a screen, and disengaging from friend or family groups, powerfully inform our emotions. It is not so much that anger is a problem—after all, God gave us the emotion of anger for the purpose of righting injustices. Rather the problem is that we do not use anger properly. With a lack of close social relationships and knowing fewer people, we invest less in other people. We are not as willing to maintain the peace between us and them. We see them as less than they are—men and women made in God’s image and likeness. Conversely, we see ourselves as more than we are—poor sinners in need of mercy. In short, we put our angry eyes on at the wrong time.
Recognizing and remembering the causes of anger can put our emotions into perspective. This awareness allows us to form our habits so that our anger better serves us to live full and peaceful lives. God has given us the gift of the emotion of anger. He has given us our own pair of angry eyes, like Mr. Potato Head. And like Mr. Potato Head, it is up to us to know when to use them—just in case.
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Image: Photo by Blperk on Wikimedia Commons
