What is Anger?

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild and do not remember

That sometime they put themself in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.

Sir Thomas Wyatt 

Throughout his life, my dear father had been an angry man. As a child I never knew why.  I never understood, why so angry. I spent many long hours with him in total happiness, too. Later in my life and towards the end of his life, I  would question to myself who or what was it that had made my father so angry, that he carried  this always with him throughout his life.  I never did find out. I never made it my purpose to find out either. I accepted his anger. I resigned myself to the fact that my father had a right to be angry. He was a principled man, he meant no harm to the world. The world had wronged him in someway.

" Never live half a life, as I have done " he told me once when i was a child - where doors are closed to you and you are not free. 


Many years later I too now feel that intense feeling of anger. Paralyzing, consuming  and cowardly, this anger will live with me forever. It affects everything I do, say, think and feel. It governs where I can go and what I can do.  It has destroyed the very person I once was. I should have gone home, I should have gone home I tell my self. I did not and now I suffer a life sentence. I should have been stronger. I  should not have been so truthful I tell myself.  I should not have answered a text 

Let me tell you what anger feels like. You would not understand at all. 

It starts with the unequivocal acceptance that there are places, cities and towns I must never go now.  There are people I must never meet and forever avoid.  Jobs, promotions and courses I cannot ever apply for. Internet sites, searches I must  forever avoid - social media sites I cannot visit. God help me when I accidently do.  Books,  Articles, journals,  papers  I cannot read.  Radio programmes, TV programmes I must not hear or  watch there are too many reminders.  Not now, not ever. I must avoid music and never ever read poetry again. There is so much hurt in every destructive  sentence constructed. 

The joy of astronomy died years and years ago. All astronomy  news  I do not hear at all now. It is not for me. It belongs only to them.

 Conferences, Summits,  business dinners, art galleries and theaters I must not go as they are no longer safe sanctuaries. Who will be the speakers, the artists, the actors ? They will speak and preach on every stage, on every platform  so proudly of Trust and Data Ethics yet have taken all mine away.

 My name, my phone number, my messages all  neatly trapped in a special secret decoy phone unknown to me. 

The sacrificial lamb, dutifully slaughtered,  

I would be forced to destroy my phone and number.  My personal data destroyed. I would destroy my name and my identity if I  could. 

 The  forced   erosion of  my freedom  thus began. The censorship of my  life commenced. The closedown life phase  entered. There is no closure in hell.

I must live the half life as my father did before me - where half the doors of the world must be firmly closed to me forever. I must never trust.  I must never enter places where I am not safe.  I alone must protect myself.  Protection of My data, my identity, my mind. 

The  wild demons in my head tell me every day I deserved this.

This brutal acceptance  spirals into  a kaleidoscope of  anger and fear

Those that we trust with our lives,  our identity,   our data , our right to anonymity are not trustworthy

 "They want to help you"  they lie

Anonymity and Protection of Identity and personal data belong only to the Powerful Intellectual elite. Absolute Power breeds corruption. They advise, scribe  and make the rules. They are the trusted. They are the controllers. They are the collectors. They speak for everyone. 

Passions are disposable. People are disposable. 

What is left behind?  Nothingness prevails. Only selfish Fear  bravely moves in  to fill the void created.   Fear  entwines  itself with desperation and hopelessness. It is then that I start to rapidly descend downwards, out of control.   You dare to ask why?

And then the Anger  begins....

The intense feeling of suffocation is overcoming.  You have tried desperately to censor the world of them,  but now you have fallen into their trap once more. 

The heart beat will start to quicken, faster and faster. Your body will pulsate, tremble  and shake. You  will feel your face flushing with red with rage, the heat begins to build within. Your breathing intensifies and you will trip over your uneven breath rhythm, sometimes unable to take in air. You are totally trapped now. Trauma starts to engulf you now.  You are drowning, you crossed the Rubicon, remember. The water is rising around you. You feel a gut wrenching sickness, a malaise enveloping you.   You want to run. Run away from it all. But the inferno in your mind holds dominion.  Just run, run as fast as you can. Escape! Get away from them. Run away from them.  Run to anywhere, just to get away. Run! get away from yourself,  get away from this moment......please! 

But your  mind keeps taking  you back, back there.

You desperately want to escape. Every morsel, every fibre in your body wants to lash out, to cry out, to  escape from the present moment of terror.
But instead you  implode internally taking the terror and fear deep inside  of you. Taking the anger to yourself. You are filled with  total hate, total vitriol of yourself. Your worthless self. Your unclean self. I should have gone home. I should have gone home. I should have gone home. 
You realise you will never  escape. You are a caged animal, a savage ape, living with these consequences beyond your control.  The reminders will not abate. Not now,  not ever.  You realise you will never be free. You must live with this truth. This unacceptable truth. I heard their words. The two of them together in unity.

    This  unconditional acceptance brings you down, back down to emptiness. Hopeless, infinite worthless emptiness.  No inner voice will be there to console or comfort you. That departed long time ago. Soulless, heartless, dead of compassion. You are nothing. 

Like my father before me, I must live with this anger. Live with it alone. Live with it in fear. Live with it in silence forever. 

 

"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another"

Professor J. Robert Oppenheimer