Manage your anger

By Jose B. Maroma Jr

 

Lent is a season of fasting and self-denial, a good time to give up certain pleasures and habits borne of wealth and privilege.

Fasting is not only abstaining from food. It is also about checking excessive desire for such mundane possessions as wealth, ornaments and power. A thin line separates prudent gratification from gluttony.

In these trying times, one of those human frailties we should discard is the penchant to flare up in anger. Moderation in language is not a sign of weakness.

On the contrary, it is a show of spiritual strength, a hallmark of statesmanship. More to the point, I appeal for sobriety among our government leaders as we enter the pre-election arena which, historically, has always been marked by mudslinging and the facetious contention that freedom of expression is a license to malign and condemn.

I wish to remind our highest officials that raging publicly in profane language only rubs salt on the wounds of those who are beginning to feel that suppression of hard feelings is the lot of the lowly, while ranting before a multitude is a privilege of the mighty.

Mark Twain once said that “anger is an acid which can do more harm on the vessel on which it is stored than on anything it is poured.”

The playwright Euripides, who wrote about famous Greek tragedies, had counselled us that “those whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes mad.”

The author is a retired civil engineer from Cabatuan, Iloilo. He likes to spend his time reading and writing on the burning issues of the day.