There is productive anger and then there is non-productive anger. One of the always non-productive angers is to be angry at yourself because you are no longer the age you want to be. (Now this could be that you are angry because you are 7 and you want to be 5. Or it could be you are 75 and want to be 50 or 35. Or it could be any age that you are not presently, even if you want to be 16 when you are 8 and you are angry because you are not. If you are under 30 years of age this anger is much less likely to kill you. But as you get to be 35, 40, 45 and 50 or more, you have to think about whether this anger is productive or just shortening your life.
There have been several periods in my life when I was extremely angry, but most of this anger I was able to use to find a way to survive really bad experiences so these times I consider my anger in some ways was what saved my life along with praying to God for help. So, I can see how anger (at least for me) allows me to double or triple my intelligence while angry and trying to figure out a way to survive any given difficult situation. So, people who tell you always to be calm are not necessarily your friends. However, if you are not self disciplined to channel and control and to use your anger in a constructive way then it might be time to learn to use your anger constructively to survive anything in your life. For example, if someone is threatening your life you can use your anger to leave that area, or to hire a lawyer or to even call a policeman or whatever you have to do to survive any given situation that life confronts you with.
But often times your anger is sort of insidious and it makes your health start to go away. And this is the anger that can kill you if you don't find a way to get rid of it. The first time I almost died from anger was manifested in getting a heart virus in 1998 because I couldn't get full custody of my daughter. And because I did not believe she was safe in the living situation she was in with her mother, I put out thousands of dollars to keep trying to get custody. So, even after thousands of dollars spent on lawyers, the best I could do was to keep my wife and daughter in the state after I legally got them both back to this state, and then I was able to get Joint legal custody of my daughter but I could not get primary physical custody. However, between ages 7 and 14 I was able to spend about 9 to 10 weeks a year with her as well as one weekend a month. My daughter is grown up now and because I did this we are on very good terms and she and her boyfriend went to England and Scotland with my present wife and other daughter last October. But back in 1998 I was so angry that I couldn't get full custody of my daughter that I almost died from a heart virus over about 7 months. At this point I realized that I had to somehow give up my anger because it was literally killing me.
The latest situation for me is regarding growing older and I find I'm struggling with things like hearing loss, and having a harder time to keep my stamina, even though I walk my dogs several times a week and sometimes my son, who is now 37 joins me as we walk the dogs in the forest or along the beach where I live. So, though I felt sort of empowered by the trip to England and Scotland, when I took the Zephyr Train from Emeryville near Berkeley, California to Denver I found I really was having trouble with all the altitudes above about 4600 feet to 5000 feet, especially if I had to sleep at that altitude. I spend about 4 or 5 two or three day periods a year in Mt. Shasta at 3500 feet or at Lake TAhoe which is at over 6000 feet. But the length of time I spent (about 1 week or more) above 5000 feet up to 7000 feet overnight really made me know I'm growing older. And even pictures taken of me at say the Grand Canyon which is pretty high in altitude and fairly low in temperature in November showed in my face in pictures taken of me that I was in some physical distress with all the altitude, dryness, cold at my present age of 63. Though I could still do it and love it, it was more of an adventure endurance contest between myself and I than anything else. In other words "How much fun could I stand and still be reasonably well out the other end?" So, when I returned home to the coast I found that from being in such high altitudes for so long that my body had adapted and I breathed on the coast at first really really slow. And if I tried to increase the speed of my breathing to how I breathed before I would get intoxicated by the air and feel lightheaded. So, one's body adapts both in going up to altitude but also has to adapt when returning or going to a sea level altitude as well. When I was younger I was much less aware of all these changes.
So, when I got back I found myself really angry at myself for being older. But I couldn't get to the place where I could say to myself until today, "Being angry at yourself for growing older is only going to shorten your life and make your wife a widow and make your kids orphans as far as you are concerned. When I reached this "Come to Jesus" moment of realization, I vowed to myself like before when I almost died of a heart virus, "To let go of my anger because it was only going to kill me." And so now I am in the process of stopping being angry at myself for growing older. Something to think about if you have a girlfriend, wife or children or significant other. They all need you alive. So the least you can do is to give up your anger so you can stay alive for them.
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