We live in a world where anger is a justifiable action. Someone does something to me, therefore I do something to them. An ‘eye-for-an-eye’. Most people at first will say that after reacting to somebody else’s anger that they felt much better ‘getting it all out’. But what about the long lasting impact that your response took on your relationship with that person? Did your screaming match make you feel that much better? Did slamming all those doors satisfy you? What about that revenge plot on your ex-best friends?

With that kind of thinking, where is it that you decide to draw the line?

Not every action deserves a reaction. I am someone that gets upset very easily, ask my ex or my last roommate. But during my fall semester of my freshman year, I took this a humanities class and we learned a lot about forgiveness and understanding that everybody’s going through something.

One example that was used was when you’re late for an appointment and you’re in a rush. You’re naturally going to be rushing to that appointment and maybe you’re driving and someone’s not going the speed you would prefer. Since your day’s not going as planned, you’re a little bit agitated and so you maybe honk your horn and blow past someone. The person you’re driving past throws up their middle finger. This is a common everyday experience. But in those couple of moments both parties are thinking how awful the other is. They might to spend awhile being upset ("How dare this other person treat me like that!") and complaining to someone else. Now not only do have this negativity, but so does someone else.

This is a fairly low level example, but can be applied to so many situations.

There are so many experiences like this that can be overcome with just realizing that the situation isn’t serious enough to warrant a reaction. After I took that class, I started to rate the seriousness of every situation that I go upset in. Whether it was a hurt feeling or an anger feeling. Would it affect me tonight? Tomorrow? Next week? All the way up to a year. If it wasn’t going to affect me in the long run (for me that means a year, but for someone else that could be a completely different set time), then I learned to let things go. It didn’t work every time, but by doing these time periods, I’m able to gauge how upset I actually am. It’s not like one day I just decided to not be upset; it was a process and one I had to get used to.

In the long run, realizing that I not every action deserved a reaction saved me. I, of course, still got upset, but my ‘bounce back’ time was much sooner. I could get upset, gauge the situation and then decide, based on the situation, that more often than not, I didn’t have much to be upset about. We’re taught that we need to feel so strongly when something happens that it distorts our image of most things and leaves us with this negativity that can actually be put aside and save our energy for other things.

I am able to let go of things much quicker and I’m a lot happier for it. I mention my mom a lot in my articles, but it’s because I talk to her a lot about everything that’s going on in my life. Last week, I told my mom a situation and I told her I couldn’t understand how people were upset over it. I told her about my process and she said that she’d never thought of it like that; which surprised me. A lot of people get heated in the moment and forget that there are other courses of action. I would just really like to remind people that their relationships with others matters. That both sides have an opinion and a choice. Every decision may affects both pertaining parties, but it is up to you to choose how it is going to affect you and your relationships personally.

I see a lot of things that claim that just your feelings matter and to do what’s right for just you. If the world functioned just like that, there would be no happiness. There would be no empathy. That is a world where bitter people make bitter decisions they will regret one day.