Fear and Anger Are The Same Thing At Different Times

It recently occurred to me that Fear and Anger are the same thing, the lack of acceptance. The only difference is that Fear is something we refuse to accept that is in the future, and Anger is something that we refuse to accept about something that is happing right now.

Recently I noticed that I can go between the feelings of Fear and Anger over the exact same thing. For example, say you are going to be late to work. The first thing you feel is Fear. You are going to be late and your boss will be angry, and you may get fired, and they you won’t be able to pay your rent, and you will be homeless, and you will get stabbed while sleeping under a freeway overpass. You don’t want this. However, you feel that this is your future and you are resisting it. This is the definition of Fear.

So you jump in the car and you are racing to work. If everything goes your way, you may make it, or only be a little bit late, and perhaps your boss wont notice. However, you get behind a slow moving car and now you are Angry. Again, this is a situation that you do not want. You are resisting it, but it is happing now. Fear can only exist in the future. When something is happening now, and you are resisting it, you get Angry.

Acceptance

As always, the answer is acceptance. There is a bit of irony however, with accepting Fear... it usually makes you angry. So you are racing to work and there is all this stuff that you Fear (that is in the future). You look at the clock and realize that in no way are you going to make it. You now have acceptance. Even though you are still not late yet, so the event is still in the future, by accepting it, it has now moved to the present. Now you are Angry, probably at yourself, for being late. So you have to go through acceptance again, this time of the present realization of the way things are right now.

Anger is a funny thing. It is always some expectation that wasn’t met. You will find that there is no exception to this truth. All Anger can be dissipated by removing the expectation. Basically acknowledging that things are the way they are right now.

Now, we can still do something about the way things are… but, we don’t have to be Angry about it.