Freedom of Choice

A human being’s actions are centered on the faculty of choice. every action stems from your approval, your knowledge, your culture, your status, your wisdom and you will. You have the freedom to perform, not to perform, or to perform an action in various ways: ‘kartum shakyam, akartum ahakyam, anyathavaa kartum shakyam’ .  If I ask you to clap your hands, you can clap, you need not clap, and you can clap the way you want to. this freedom is unique to human beings.

A cow is a vegetarian not by choice, nor is a tiger carnivorous by choice. Animals have no choice over their eating habits. If a pregnant mosquito requires a blood meal it will try to bite you if you happen to be around. It is its very nature (svabhava).  It has no choice. if a donkey feels like kicking, it will kick. Even a motor performs mechanically according to how it is programmed.

But as a human being, I  have to make choices in everything I do. I have to exercise my choice in the way I interact with people, the language I use, the food I eat and so on. Human beings alone have this privilege to choose their actions. i have freedom with regard to my physical, oral and mental actions; I have choice over what I do, say or think.

As my knowledge is limited and my control over external forces is minimal, it is possible for an action to go wrong. But as long as the action comes from me, and erroneous action is detected  and acknowledged as wrong, I become a wiser person in the process of doing it. Although learning from a mistake is not the only way to learn, I become wiser from every acknowledged erroneous action. Having become wiser, I may not commit  the same mistake again. Thus every action I perform is an expression of my freedom of choice. A person who exercises his choice over actions judiciously, is indeed, a good manager of himself. 

Action and Reaction Response

The problem with human beings is that we not only act, but we also react. Reactions are a part of every individual’s behavior; they are totally mechanical. They do not have our sanction, whereas actions do. Since a  reaction has no sanction, it can occur repeatedly, and you have no control over its occurrence. You may find yourself getting angry over and over again in similar situations because anger being a reaction, does not have the sanction of your will or your wisdom. This is the essential difference between an action and a reaction; an action based on an individual’s  free will and wisdom, whereas, a reaction is an instantaneous  mechanical response that occurs without the consultation of either one’s will or wisdom.

As a human being I have to act and I cannot afford to react. A response to a situation can be either a reaction or an action. If you consider a situation in all its aspects and then reach a decision to act upon it in an appropriate manner then it is an action. If any mistake does occur while you perform the action, it can be corrected and you become wiser. Your response is conscious when you act.

A reaction is  a mechanical response. It is impulsive. It just happens. An emotional response like anger is common to everyone, but no one consciously decides to get angry.  If I request you to get angry now for half-a-minute, you cannot get angry. does this mean you are incapable of anger? If you are free from anger, you are free from every other reaction as well. But the fact is that although you are capable of getting angry, you cannot be angry out of conscious effort. Anger is something that juts happens to you. that is why it is mechanical.

Anger (reaction) does not pay.

Often we react to situations because people do seem to respond favourably to our outbursts. I may think that anger pays, and therefore I do not have  to deal with it. In fact, I can continue to get angry as long as I seem to get my way. As a child my anger was interpreted as a natural response of a child’s helplessness. As a child I learned that anger works. Now as an adult, I continue to think it works. In fact, many people think that only anger works and that one has to get angry and throw one’s weight around to get their way. This is poor management and in the long run, destructive.

My anger as a child did not, in fact help me to get the toy back, nor does it help me now as an adult. No one respects a person who gets angry. If a manger gets angry and thereby gets something done, it only reveals that his employees wish to avoid his anger. They do not wish to lose their jobs and so they try to appease hum. It does not mean that they respect him. Anger makes you lose your wisdom, your culture, your education and your social status; it makes you lose stock of who you are. It completely overwhelms you.

Some consider that righteous anger is justified. If someone had treated me unjustly, according to such people, I am justified in getting angry with that person. I do not agree with this reasoning. Any reaction that overtakes me completely and rules over me is not justified. Under its influence I am hardly aware of what I am doing; I no longer have a choice over what I say or how I behave; I have an inner blackout. Such a reaction has no legitimate place in my life. I have to address it or live under its tyranny.

Righteous objection, not anger, is proper. I can be firm in my conviction and refuse to yield to pressures, no matter how persistent they are. IN this manner, I deal with a situation rationally and appropriately. This earns me the respect of those who interact with me.

Dealing With Anger

Anger, jealousy, depression, frustration, and sorrow are all reactions. If you deal with one reaction, you begin to deal with almost all reactions. If you have to pull a cot, you pull one leg of it and you have moved the other three legs as well. Once you deal with anger, you successfully deal with all other reactions as well.

To deal with a reaction, one first has to distinguish it from action. Differentiating reaction from an action gives me  the knowledge of what I have to deal with. I make sure I recognise when I am angry. I acknowledge that I have no power over anger, I understand that anger comes without my bidding and I have no control over it. Just as an alcoholic cannot stop his addiction unless he acknowledges his powerlessness over alcoholism so too; I cannot deal with my anger unless I accept that anger happens without my approval. As long as I refuse to admit this fact, I will continue to be a victim of anger.

This is the reason I cannot advice you, ‘Don’t get angry’; you may get angry even in the process of trying to avoid anger! I can only advice you! I can only advice you in areas where you have  a choice over your action. A reaction such as anger can only be addressed by analysing it. By understanding your anger and its cause, you learn to manage it.

Anger is in reality a symptom of a problem that needs my attention. It is an expression of pain. I picked up this pain when I was very young. As a child, I found myself helpless in some situations and experienced pain. I could not give expression to this pain; I could not communicate this pain as I did not have the language skills to talk, nor did the rules at home let me express it in any other form. As a result, my pain became buried deep within me and this is the basis of my present anger. Now that I am an adult, my anger is indicative of my areas of vulnerability, my sensitive spots. External situations are only a trigger for my anger to flare up, but the real problem is my own perception of situations. My perceptions are molded by my own past and they color what I see. It is important that one is aware of this in dealing with anger since the natural tendency is often to externalize the cause of anger.

Since each person has an individual past which is different from everyone else’s, each person’s anger is due to a different reason, it is unique to the person. Someone might get angry because he thinks he is being criticized, in his own estimation he is not efficient and so any hint of censure disturbs him. Someone else cannot stand any change in his plan because he loses control. Therefore, each person’s area of vulnerability has to be discerned.

A Brahmacari’s Anger

 I would like to narrate an experience from my own life that made me acutely aware of my problem with anger. As a brahmacari, I had resolved to deal with my anger. I thought I had succeeded. I did not get angry for three years and I concluded that I was rid of my anger. Although no one else knew, I was quiet about this accomplishment.

Once I took a group of one hundred children from Bangalore to a children’s festival in Madras. I had written to the person responsible for travel arrangements in Madras to ,make suitable arrangements for our return trip by train. the children were travelling without their parents and I was responsible for their safe return. the person I had written to a month in advance was a railway official and it was easy for him to make arrangements I had requested. I had asked to reserve one compartment for all the children so that I could look after them. When I reached Madras I contacted him and inquired about the ticket arrangements. he replied, ‘Yes, it has to be done’. I asked him once more after a couple of days about the reservations. he said. ‘It is all taken care of’. I was relieved to hear this and did not question him anymore. The day we were to leave, i reached the train station with all the hundred kids. The man was there but no reserved compartment. with total nonchalance, he said, ‘Ten children go here, ten will go there and so on’. But who will go with them’,  I shouted! With a wise man’s smile he said, ‘You are a brahmacari, you are not supposed to get angry’. that was the last straw! All hell broke loose. the floodgates of my anger that were closed for three years burst open.

That was my last anger.The one thing my final outburst accomplished was to make me wiser. At that time I was struggling to learn and I was honest with myself. I faced up to my lack of mastery over my anger. I knew I had to find a better way to manage my anger.  My acceptance of my powerlessness over anger had taken me more than half way towards my goal.

Everyday there are endless occasions for anger. Open the tap, there is no water, switch on the light, there is no electricity. If you travel in a car in India and you happen to sit in the backset and look out at the traffic, you can have nightmares. Animals, pedestrians, cyclists, three-wheelers, buses, and trucks all make you an angry person. All occasions for anger!

Identify Areas of Vulnerability

Since each person’s area of vulnerability is unique to him, each person has to find out for himself the situations that provoke his anger. You observe your reactions over a period of time. a pattern will emerge that gives an insight into your anger over a period of ytime. A pattern will emerge that gives an insight into your anger. What you are unconscious of will gradually begin to surface.

How does one begin doing this? Maintaining a journal is one way. It worked for me. If I got angry in some situation, I would note it down in my diary. Without any judgment of myself, I would write down exactly what made me angry. I did this consistently with every situation that made me angry. I maintained this for a month. During that time I would not turn back the pages and read what I had written. After a month, I read the journal and I saw a pattern emerging.

While in the process of addressing my anger, there is no reason to regret what happened. A learning person never regrets and a regretting person never learns. There is something to be learned from every situation. if you regret what happened then you allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the situation. You need to be objective about a situation in order to learn from it. This is similar to maintaining accounts, you know not where is excess expenditure, where is waste, and so on. So too, writing can make you aware of these problem areas. This awareness helps you to anticipate your reaction in different situations and you can responds consciously, instead of mechanically.

Live One day at a Time

I can deal with my anger by making a resolve. Getting up in the morning, I make a resolve that I will be alert to my anger today. I never say, ‘I will not get angry hereafter.’ This will not work. therefore, resolve only for one day.

How did you reach your present age? One day passed, then another day, and then another day, and so on. You live your life day by day, one day at a time. This is a fact of life. When I was young and asked my mother for something, she would say, ‘We will see about it if we wake up in the morning.’ That is the best way of teaching a child the reality of life and death - one day at a time. In the night we put an end to the day and go to sleep. we do not know where we will wake up the next morning, in the same bed or in Heaven! That we wake up each morning is itself a miracle, a grace.

Dealing with my anger one day at a time gives me breathing space; my anger no longer seems unmanageable. All I have to do is manage it for one day and I can learn to manage it for a lifetime.

Auto Suggestion

Suppose you set your alarm to get up early in the morning to catch a plane. Invariably you find yourself getting up before the alarm rings. the human mind has the amazing capacity to accept a suggestion an bring it to fruition at the right time. In personal management, i use this capacity when I say to myself. ‘I will not get angry today’. During the day when you are about to get angry, the red light flashes in your mind indicating that you are getting angry. You are forewarned. Even when you get angry you are aware of your rising anger. There comes a time when you know you are about to get angry ahead of time.

Eventually your whole life becomes one of action, conscious actions. You command respect from others. This is the only way to avoid anger. Sometimes a person requires therapy to deal with in-built anger. More often it is sufficient to observe one’s anger and recognise its cause to be released from its stranglehold. Then you are free from anger.