Anger
It's not what you think...
The first month of Spring is cold and blustery. It is the time of the Wood element with its facets of wind, blue green, shout, tendons and ligaments, and the high clear smell of fresh sap. The winds arrive with a joyful cry. There is now a level of directionality. An upward and forward force that propels the cold into the gap between shirt and waistband. Small wonder folks think it’s still winter…cold in January is content to sit out in the car with the engine running. Cold in early spring knocks on the front door and says, “Did you mean to leave your car windows open last night?”
It is this force that classically we call ‘anger’- anger as the appropriate movement of Spring. But we have a lot of preconceptions and prior experience with anger, most of it unpleasant. What do we associate with anger? Yelling, shouting and violence come to my mind. Here’s where we must differentiate between the appropriate movement of Spring versus a pathological emotion. As a pathological emotion, there are two flavors- the swelling scary tsunami of rage associated with Water and the slow-simmering “it may have happened twenty years ago, but I’m gonna burn your house down” resentment of Earth. Both of these emotions contain violations of boundaries.
I’m gonna take MY problem and make it YOURS.
Let’s use a different word for the power of Spring- assertion. We are standing upright in the face of an opposing force like the wind or our friend’s insistence that roasted vegetable lasagna is desirable. One of the best descriptions of anger as a power for good comes from Gabor Mate in his book “When the Body Says No”.
“Anger is the energy Mother Nature gives us…to stand forward on our own behalf and say I matter,” says the therapist Joann Peterson…”The difference between the healthy energy of anger and the hurtful energy of physical and emotional violence is that anger respects boundaries. Standing forward on your own behalf does not invade anyone else’s boundaries.”
The movement in spring has its beginnings in the last month of winter. Yes, the light and Yang is returning. But cold comes crashing in to counterbalance it. If we see each season as preparation for the next, January is preparing us for the bursting open of the seed of Spring.
Because, as humans, we get to choose. To go with the flow or against it. To walk out into 20 degrees and wind or hunker down in the quilt with Netflix and cocoa and say, “Call me when the weather is to my liking.” Cold, like heat, is simply an opportunity for resilience. Call it fad if you like, all these folks doing cold plunges and saunas. But in a world that is selling us a line that we can have whatever we want whenever we want it, resilience is a lost art. And we are weaker for it. A two minute cold shower in the morning encourages yang qi, resulting in warmth and a 2 marshmallow dopamine hit that will power your day…
This is the movement of life- always in flux between the two poles. Never totally yin or yang but a dance between the two. Which brings up another useful word in spring- tension. Yet another glorious word with which we have a dysfunctional relationship. McGilchrist and Vervaeke1 like the term tonos to step around tension and its baggage. A skeleton without tendons is a lifeless lump. An unstrung bow. In Spring, we can usefully begin to move our tendons more. No, this is not stretching. Stretching a cold tendon is like stretching a cold rubber band- POP! Start moving, get the blood flowing and if you want stretch, do it after.
So start moving, lest you join the “I’ve got cabin fever” crowd. Stop worrying about the forsythia and the daffodils- they know what they’re doing. (Take note- Maciocia assigns worry to the Wood constitution. Some of them are known for fretting, but worry is not the deal.) Even better, take a cue from the trees and spring bulbs. Watch what they do- they emerge, then pause reassessing the terrain. Then upwards again. They are not foolhardy. They are the strategists of Spring, holding the big picture and moving it forward, one step at a time.
The three months of Spring are called Springing Up and Unfolding. Heaven and Earth together produce life, and the 10,000 beings are invigorated.
At night, one goes to bed, at dawn, one gets up. One paces the courtyard with great strides, hair loose, body at ease, exerting the will for life:
Letting live, not killing giving, not taking away, rewarding, not punishing.2
Here’s your soundtrack- now go stride around the courtyard….Just pick a different pair of shoes.
Nothing to do with Spring- simply an extraordinary conversation between three brilliant minds- Iain McGilchrist, John Vervaeke and Daniel Schmachtenberger on The Psychological Drivers of the Metacrisis. In terms of food for thought, it is a leisurely five course meal at a Michelin 5 Star…
The Way of Heaven: Neijing Suwen Chapters 1 and 2 by Claude Larre