Today I got angry. Oh yeah, I know that probably sounds quite droll, but for me it’s a bit of an event. There are some very good reasons why I don’t allow myself to get angry any longer, but that’s another long and boring story that dredges up more of the past than I care to think about right now.
As I get older I realize that I have less and less control of the world around me. Of course, the reality is that I’m just realizing that I never had any control, but you know, when you’re young and full of piss & vinegar you just don’t see the truth. I think what upset me was that for a moment I got angry with another person; somebody I don’t know other than through simple correspondence. A nice person from all accounts, but for a moment I allowed myself to believe they were different than most and then they did that damn human thing and made an overall judgment about me without even knowing me. I think it wasn’t really anger, just good old fashion disappointment.
Years ago, when I turned on the emotions again after turning them off back in the military, I learned the penalty. Nobody told me it was like water backing up behind a dam. It just stores up until you open the valve and then there’s that flood of emotions. Actually it’s more like bank account because it comes out with interest, compounded, huge … and you’re never prepared, at least not fully. Once I got a handle on it I had a lot better understanding why so many of these kids that are in the military end up taking their own lives. It’s just impossible for many of them to deal with. They are good, clean kids trying to grow up fast and survive in impossible situations that most can’t handle. A lot of them bury the feelings, but a few just can’t do that. Of course the ones that are successful don’t realize that those buried feelings are that time bomb that will explode sometime, perhaps a long way in the future, without warning and doing more damage than one could ever imagine.
Life is full of those tiny little lessons and they show up all sorts of ways. I remember my dad always using a particular metaphor to make a point. He’d say “I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man that had no feet”. It was kind of morbid but I got the point. Little did I know that in just a few years later, walking off a hot LZ carrying a half dozen boots with feet still in them that the little bell, you know, the one that rings when you “get it” would go off and the old man’s metaphor would take on an entirely new, painfully morbid reality of it’s own.
Yep, it’s just those “tiny little’s” that seem to make all the difference some times and worst of all, we never know when the point will come home. I wonder how many of them are still buried out there with my name on it, but worse yet, I wonder how many of them I’ve sprinkled into my own kids lives and how they will discover them.
I promised myself that I won’t get angry again. I know it’s a promise I can’t keep, but God and Grandfather know it’s one that I really want to …..
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| Just One of Those Tiny Little …. |
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