Praying With Anger

PRAYING WITH ANGER

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." - Mark  Twain

Human being is a fascinating creation, especially the naughty mind inside the solid dome. The resident of the skull is blessed with a lot of arrogance, it never wants to feel sub-par. So when things go according to the King-dome(pun intended), it literally believes itself to be the King. It rubbishes the claims of existence of any higher authority, which is otherwise, felt by the others. Some well taught children obey their peers and not only do they believe in the higher authority, they even look up to it and believe of them as their well-wisher companion. They grow on to be the highly content of the beings. The agnostics, on the other hand, spend their lives under stress, of questioning anything & everything. Give a dark alley to a believer and a non-believer to cross and see the results. The non-believer always has a few doubts but, the confident non-believer shall outperform the believer because s/he analyzes the situation before acting. The believer, no matter the senses or analyses, shall cross it with the faith s/he possess. 

We all lead dual lives, one which we are conscious of and the one which we are submissive of. Sometimes, we make something work that we weren't expected to and, we let others believe that we can do a lot more. The ability to notice such abilities is appreciable, to appreciate them is even more so. It is wise to be well informed and well acquainted with one's capabilities, but such wise men lack the element of surprise, that is to surprise themselves and others. Perhaps the wise do not believe in the power of a surprise, or maybe they do and intentionally refrain from it. Whatever the case be, to the outside world, a person always carries with him/her- a bag full of expectations. Consider this, a barely an-year old infant can count backwards from 10 to 1 in under 30 seconds. When the parents find out about it they, naturally, get ecstatic and motivate the child to do more. Motivation can be a strong thing, for the uninitiated. It acts as a driving force, to use that extra ounce of energy and put it to a constructive use. This might lead to either; the person becoming stronger, mentally, or the person losing all hope, should one fail to produce the expected outcome. Expectations lead to the impossible, to make them un-impossible. There seldom exists any emotion, feeling which one experiences when, accomplishing the goal set for the self. The heart leaps higher, and the self confidence increases. The person then, enters the illusion of being a paramount. The feeling of being invincible takes over, add to it the swift constructing ego and you have the ideal self. Interestingly, the Star Wars villains are addressed as the "Supreme" leader/commander. And like those villains, unrealistic, over-ambitious, over-possessive expectations do not end well for the expect-ator. Achievements leads to great expectation and we usually end up expecting from others what we failed to achieve.

Whether it is looking in the mirror after a sweaty workout, in hopes of finding a newly swollen nerve or a beefed muscle; or getting ready for an occasion to match every crease of the cloth with the accessories, whenever we meet someone, we have an inherent set of expectations associated with it, specifically the person. In the mirror analogy, we are the person we are about to meet- a mirror image, quite literally. Sometimes, things don't always go according to the plan, do they? This is the part where one of mans most primal emotions comes into play - ANGER. Anger possesses quite a quanta of energy, usually directed towards self-/destructive activities. Men burn in rage, viz. the higher form of anger, and it takes a toll on them; both- physically & mentally. The mind is like a stagnant water river flowing with a constant flow but even rivers can turn rogue! Anger can be elicited by virtually anything. The suffocating/suppressed feeling of not being able to express, being dwarfed by another being or even a meager taunt which lacks the innocent panache that accompanied it during its deliverance. People burn in fury, they get consumed by the energy that a fire brings with it. Suddenly, we have the bizarre version of a once perfectly sane person. Unless we understand the root cause of this temporal change in the person, it should be considered a felony to talk about the superficiality of it. 

It is during the darkest of times when the beacon of hope lights the brightest. The empirical, instinctive calling that any person has, during the hours of distress, is that of Praying. There is always an abstract or another human or a philosophy that every person holds high above everything else, the faith in it is what compels a person to look up to it during testing times. While praying is pristine, it is more about the self than the abstract. When we pray, we face the facts as they are. Ergo, in a way, we are consoling ourselves of the dire situation and, are asking for a divine intervention to escape the conscious realms of the world. What goes around, comes around with the added angular momentum and terminal velocity- especially when in the direction of gravity. Some famous religions believe that every human being holds the key to the answers to mysteries of the universe and that, it is the consciousness of the person that burdens the knowledge and replaces it with shallow information. Admitting to pray does not label a person to be an orthodox. Rather, it is a way of learning more about the self, in all its wildness. But when we do share our worries with the One, who are we talking to at that time? It is us. Extending this cynical logic, we are asking for help to ourselves, who led us to the situation that, made us look and ask for help. If you represent the last line in a diagrammatic form, you'd reach a 0. And this, 0, is what is the truth of life. Everything is cyclical, even change. And nothing is a permanent as change.

Ultimately, it turns out that, knowing the self is what life is all about. Some call it a journey, others say it's a voyage. Whichever you might abide by, just peek outside for a view from the voyager before praying as even; praying with anger has some great expectations associated with it.

"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." - Alexander Pope