Our present time has been dubbed the “Age of Anger.” Reflective that now, possibly more than ever, a larger number of us in our human collective are angry. In fact, “half of all Americans are angrier today than they were a year ago,” according to an Esquire/NBC News survey. Rather than just being a normal human emotion that the majority of us feel on occasion, anger has become pandemic.
But how can we not feel angry?
It seems everywhere we look we are bombarded with scenes and stories of systemic injustice, violence, abuse, and greed. We feel helpless, and according to Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher and author of Anger and Forgiveness: Anger is our reaction to that feeling. Anger seems to give us back a sense of control, she says—by being angry we believe we can somehow change our course, and that of our society.
But while anger may be an understandable response, it is both detrimental to our health and to the wellbeing of the society we wish to improve. Is there a more productive course of action: One where we can bring about positive change while also unwinding the anger pandemic we’re facing?
Love vs. Anger
The story of Julia Butterfly Hill is worth contemplating as we think about this question. Back in 1997 she climbed to the top of a 1,500-year-old redwood tree and lived there for two years to prevent loggers from cutting it down. When interviewed on her decision to save “Luna” the tree and ultimately three acres of forest land she said: “I didn’t climb the tree because I was angry at the corporations and the government; I climbed the tree because when I fell in love with the redwoods, I fell in love with the world.”
For some reason, we have convinced ourselves that anger is what is needed to force us—and those we wish to influence—out onto the streets and into action. It’s as if we are saying to the universe that we believe anger to be more powerful than love. But as Hill and many other activists have demonstrated, that would be a mistake.
Love will do far more than get us marching.
Because love will do far more than get us marching. Love will put us on a plane and drop us in the line of conflict to take a bullet for another. Love will send us to college for eight years so that we are qualified to save lives. Love will have us leave our dream jobs to assist a parent in need, or to bring up a child, or to live in a tent in a tree for two years. Love can change systems, laws, countries, and history. If we have any doubts we need only look to Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi. Love is far more powerful than anger—we may have just forgotten.
Anger Spreads Anger
As yogis it is our practice to choose love over anger for ourselves, but also for the sake of others. While there is limited discussion on anger in yogic texts, both the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are clear that, for anyone on a yogic path, anger is not something to be cultivated—that it only leads to misery. Anger is the opposite of ahimsa—the first and most important of yoga’s Yamas and Niyamas: nonviolence, love in action.
It serves us to recognize anger as it rises within us, and not to be duped into thinking it is benefiting the world. Anger makes us stressed and anxious, and has been shown in studies to increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks, and other cardiovascular problems.
Beyond the negative repercussions to our health, anger also impacts our relationships with others. Anger is often fueled by unhappy thoughts of hatred and judgment against another or a group. It cannot truly unify—it can only separate. And if you believe we’re all interconnected, then you also have to accept that those thoughts will have an impact on the minds of others. Your hatred will be shared.
This is the crux of anger. It brings us more of what we don’t want, and it spreads to others.
Worse still, sometimes we end up expressing our anger in words or actions. We all know how this ends. We click “send” on an angry email we have written, we say unkind words to another, or maybe we even resort to violence in the heat of the moment. And perhaps after this we feel momentary relief—but that is simply because for an instant we were left with zero anger, and zero anger feels good… That is before it’s replaced by remorse for offloading it onto someone else, only to return to us later as anger once again.
This is the crux of anger. It brings us more of what we don’t want, and it spreads to others.
Anger As a Sign
So what do we do? Ultimately our motivation in fighting for human rights, animal rights, or environmental causes is simple: We want a more loving world. So love is what we must bring. And here is where anger can be our tool.
Any time we experience anger it is a signal to us that we care about something. Just before anger takes over there is a softness, points out Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön. And it is that softness we can tap into. If social and racial injustice and inequality make us angry, it is because we love people and do not want to see anyone suffer. If animal cruelty makes our blood boil, it is because we care deeply about animals. And that is the feeling we need to focus on and to cultivate, because therein lies love. That becomes our teacher and power source—not our judgment or hatred of a “perpetrator.”
Any time we experience anger it is a signal to us that we care about something.
Hill calls it “fierce love” and it propels us to act. In an interview with KCET she said that from the love she felt for the trees she heard a voice tell her: “If you walk away from injustice, your inaction is as much a part of the injustice as the actions of others. If you have something to give, you give it.”
And so we end up sharing love. In 11.35 of the Yoga Sutras, it is stated that when one is established in ahimsa those in their presence will experience their hostility and hatred dissolving entirely—that when we practice love in thoughts, words, and actions, we actually help to reduce the anger of others. So not only do we play a part in solving our anger pandemic, but we can also begin to bring about solutions to that which caused it in the first place.
4 Steps to Turn Anger Into Love in Action
1. Ease up on yourself.
Anger is part of our human experience. Even the Dalai Lama has said he gets angry. So the first step in working with anger is to be very kind to ourselves when we start to feel it arise. As Thich Nhat Hanh says: “Our attitude is to take care of anger. We don’t suppress or hate it, or run away from it. We just breathe gently and cradle our anger in our arms with the utmost tenderness.”
2. Start small.
Pema Chödrön suggests first practicing with something that triggers in us only a little anger, and seeing if we can sit with it. With patience and honesty we can begin to look under the hood, and uncover what we are attached to that is causing our anger. We can also begin to touch that soft spot that lies beneath our anger.
3. Find your passion.
When we keep delving beneath our anger we will find the vastness of our heart. Somewhere in there lies our passion—our enthusiasm and spirit. And by exploring it we can be inspired to get creative about what—and how—we can give to the world to make it a more peaceful, loving place. From here we can become activists of love and not anger.
4. Let go of the outcome.
Hill says she would never had lasted 738 days up the redwood tree had she been attached to the outcome. Whatever our hopes are for the world and for the loving actions we engage in, we have to let go of any expectation or else we may give up. Instead we trust that if our input is love, so too will be the output.
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Helen Avery is a senior writer for Wanderlust Media. She is also a journalist, writer, yoga teacher, minister, and full-time dog walker of Millie, residing in Brooklyn, New York. You can find out more about her on her website, Life as Love.