I’m not a very angrily reactive man, for the most part it takes me some real severe agitation for me to snap or a prolonged build up without a release or relaxation period. In many of more recent adult years I have learned to manage and tame my anger, especially in constructive manners. This has not been the case for the majority of my life, when I was younger I was quite angry and snapped far more frequent than I ever would now. This maturity of emotions can come with age but most of my ability to calm myself is from exploring what makes me angry and letting it go, especially if it doesn’t serve any positive outcomes. The thing that has helped the most is being situationally aware and mindful of my emotions and feelings. Often times when we snap it’s because of a lack of situational awareness and mindfulness, we don’t see the emotions that we are feeling and instead react to the situation. Cars are the thing that still, as much as I try not to, get me to a point of frustration and anger that makes me snap.
I’ve recently have had car troubles, specifically a broken shift clamp. If you have an opportunity to buy a 2001 Ford Focus ZX3 manual, don’t! Just walk away! Not because the car itself is bad, actually I’ve really enjoyed this car, but because the shift cables and assembly are the WORST designed cables I have ever seen! Seriously, just run away. However, being the glutton for punishment that I seem to be and the frugal person that I am, I choose to do 95% of all my car maintenance, this is including broken shift assembly repair. Why you may ask would I do the majority of my car maintenance when I can afford to get it done by a professional, well because I like it. I like solving problems and I have real issues with other people solving my problems for me. I like to understand how and why the problem has arisen and how I can fix it. It’s just my nature. That being sad, some problems can get me insanely worked up and frustrated.
Enter Scene: just broke the tab on the shift clamp while attempting to properly adjust the cables, rage boiling inside of me, I try to shift into gear, snap, no more plastic, BOOM! mental snap, BANG! my fist connecting squarely with large force on my dash. Months of frustration, anger and rage towards my car culminates and overloads my brain and I reactive without presence of mind. It’s a very rare reaction for me but it happens. Cars undrivable, fist is throbbing in pain and the force of my punch breaks the plastic holding my radio in place. Violence folks, very very rarely ever solves the problem.
Well what the fuck, where does zen come into this? Well right here. Sometimes no matter how mindful you live, we are still flawed human beings. The following days since I initially messed my car up has reinforced my practice of being mindful of my feelings and practicing calming exercises. When you do your best to live a life of mindfulness you learn and understand your feelings much more completely. You can sense certain emotions and preemptively take actions to dissuade yourself from reacting negatively to those emotions. Like any practice though we will at times fail and the result is the metaphorical, in this situation physical, busted knuckles. Sometimes we need to eat the pain, experience the pain, and learn from the pain. Three days later, utilizing what I learned from my previous explosive reaction, I was enlightened to the situation, had the presence of mind to step back and take a few deep breaths. I avoided completely another outburst while fixing what I broke 3 days earlier and believe me I wanted to punch something but I learned from my previous mistake that it would only make the situation worse.
Practicing mindfulness, patience, and doing your best to live a more zen lifestyle gives us a superior ability to understand and react properly to our emotions. Having the ability to let go of the negative feelings and reactions, holding onto the positive feelings and reactions, and learning from our failures will assist us in becoming more serene, happy, and fulfilled people. We can move forward in our lives in a meaningful manner and without busted knuckles.