It seems like it is easier for us to do things that hurt other people, or to leave a given situation, when they piss us off. We lose sympathy and compassion when they “make us” angry, and this makes it easier to act harshly and coldly. But, it seems to really come down to the fact that what makes us angry is that we don’t get our way, that the other person is not acting in accordance with what would make us most happy and comfortable; that they are not acting like, or saying what, we want them to. It is unsatisfied desire. It can also be childish and selfish, a self-involved lack of empathy for the other person’s feelings and conflicts.
A spouse or lover “drives” their partner to cheat, or have an affair, but this is really just a pathetic excuse to justify selfish and childish behavior.
When someone pisses us off it makes it easier for us to leave them or hurt them; we think that we are dealing with reality but we are really avoiding reality by slipping into that walled and guarded angry place, which is not reality but an escape from having to deal with reality with maturity, equanimity, and generosity.
But I think it is important, as well, to understand that it is not that someone pisses us off, but rather it is we who allow ourselves to be pissed off or not, to lose our patience and empathy; it is we who want something, and we do what we need to do to ease the way in order to get it.
Certainly, a person is responsible for their actions, but a reaction is also an action, and to hold someone else responsible for your reactions is to hold them responsible for your actions, and that would then mean that they are not responsible for their own actions but someone else or something else is, and so on. It simply does not work that way. This is a point that so many people do not understand. If someone is mean, they are responsible for that; but you inferring something does not necessarily mean it was intended. And if we get pissed off, that is an action on our part, and we, and only we, have control of, and are thus fully responsible for, that action. No matter how much easier it may make it for us to believe otherwise, no one is, nor can be, responsible for our choices and actions. Selfishness, even if under the pretense of anger or dissatisfaction of not getting what we want, when and how we want it, is still selfishness.
Of course, sometimes in these situations we are awakened to the reality of a person or situation, to their selfishness or lack of empathy, which was distorted or hidden by our fantasies, illusions, or suspended belief. But our willful, or even ignorant, lack of awareness of, and care for, reality is also only our responsibility, to see things as they really are, both with others as well as ourselves. This is easier said than done when fear, love, and clinging are part of the mix. We do what we choose to do, whether we understand why or not; there is no getting around it.
I don’t think I can stress this point enough—the absolute importance and profundity of taking responsibility for your own actions, of not holding anyone, or anything, responsible for your actions, beliefs, and life. Until one can take responsibility for his or her own actions and beliefs, he or she will remain a child. I think that this is one of the things that the existentialists got right. In order to really be who you are, to really be, you must take responsibility for your own being.
.
From my personal notes, 12/24/99
