Beware anger is contagious. Don’t allow others anger to become yours.
Prabakaran Thirumalai
On our recent airplane trip to Chicago, we were getting settled into our seats in row 12 when a woman went into row 11 and turned to look at us and shouted in our faces, “I’m seating in row 11,” which by the way was the row she was standing in at that moment. She added, “You are in my seat!” I looked at Joel and went to get up to show her the row numbers. Before I could do that the calm gentlemen in row 10 stated she was in the right row, row 11. She quickly took her seat without acknowledging she had made an error.
I was seating there thinking how wrong she was to yell at us and did she not have the decency to acknowledge she was wrong. Then I realized that her anger had seeped into my heart and head. Anger is truly contagious; so I prayed to remove the anger from me and to get back to my place of peace and love, for I knew it was more important to live in peace than to be right. I was justified to tell that story over and over again but what would that do for me but confirm I was right to complain and every time I told the story the anger would seep back into my heart.
This is a very simplistic example but it made me understand how anger can run rampart from person to person. As I look back at this scenario, I realize how much anger that woman was holding inside of her for her to scream at us. It was her cry for love. When people live with anger in their heart it comes screaming out, they are the ones that need kindness the most. Next time I get falsely accused I hope I can put the anger I caught from them aside to buy them a snack box and break the chain reaction of hate that anger causes. I’ve come to learn that true forgiveness is not getting upset in the first place.
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