Will Anger Lead to Action?

I was traveling this past week and I was in Austin, TX for a conference when the election results were published very early Wednesday morning. As I was walking to the conference event that morning, a cyclist whom was coming towards me and I let pass before crossing the road yelled at me "Get out of my way you bitch" (left the word in for emphasis - not a word I have ever been called). Later that night, I was walking to one of the events for this conference (the Tableau conference has 13,000 attendees so it is huge) and I got swept up in a protest by students from University of Texas at Austin. One of the video clips I took is below.

This type of anger is usually bred by frustration. When we get frustrated, we get angry and that is the definite sense I got from this protest. Judge for yourself. Anger out of frustration is rarely a good anger. Even the civil rights protests of the sixties was fueled by productive action (boycotts etc.). Not all anger is bad. Injustice should make us angry and anger then should lead to action. In this case, it is hard to label it an injustice since our election laws go back hundreds of years and are designed to prevent populous areas from dominating our vast country. Nobody is contesting the fairness of the election. There is nothing that will change. It really is just venting. Consider the protests in Portland which turned into a riot with windows being smashed and local businesses damaged. I had a coworker friend who would say to me when I would vent - "Dan, what would you want me to do". What matches anger is the ability to translate that anger to passion and passion to action.

I love a hot shower. I am told that water at 98 or 99 degrees centigrade is pleasant. But at 100 degrees centigrade, water boils and it is very unpleasant to take a scalding shower. Our country needs to move back from scalding to hot and we need to channel the 50% of us that are upset in a positive direction. I pray that happens.

A Little Birdie Told Me

Ever wonder where certain expressions came from? The expression "a little birdie told me" comes from Ecclesiastes 10:20 and it says "Even in your thoughts, do not curse the king, nor in your bedroom curse the rich, for a bird of the air will carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter". I find the Scriptures to be very timely even in our high tech world. The wisest man in the world, Solomon who wrote Ecclesiastes could not have foreseen the social media crazed world that we live in today. Yet this verse is more relevant today than it ever was.

The point is that what you say seemingly in private will come back to haunt you in public. Does this ring true with today's presidential candidates? Both candidates have said something whether in text form or speaking that they never expected would be public and yet they were. Digital assets record just about anything that comes out of our mouth or through our fingertips. We are just a notch below a creator God who knows everything that we are thinking even if we don't say it. The cure for the "little birdie issue" is not to not say it but to examine our own attitudes and beliefs.

As an example, this past week our Indians were in the World Series against the Cubs. My wife is from the Chicago area, I went to college near Chicago, our daughter lives in Chicago with rabid Cubs fans as friends and family. Both Deb and I ourselves are Cubs fans. I went to a number of Cubs games when I was in school. So we found ourselves engaged in a little "smack talk". But it was very good natured and when the Cubs pulled it out, we were happy for our friends. There was no bitterness involved. When Lebron James went to Miami, I found myself bitterly rooting against the Miami Heat. It did not feel healthy and it lasted for one season. Bitterness towards others is never healthy.

Getting at the root is the first step. Self-examination is a theme rooted throughout the Bible. Jesus said to look at the log in our own eye before examining the speck in someone else's eye. When we do this, we are less prone to want to say or do something that a little birdie will carry out to others.