If someone walked up to you and punched you in the stomach, you’d probably react.
You’d lash out; you’d walk away; you’d defend yourself.
Yet, everyday you come into work, sit down at your desk, power up your pc and get willingly get sucker punched by culture around you.
The blow steals your breath, you start to doubt yourself, and eventually you just surrender.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of being the victim, of raising your hand to complain, while refusing to get off your ass to do anything about it.
I won’t lie to you, it takes courage to step up and shape the world around you.
You may think you don’t have it in you.
You are wrong.
You just need to get mad.
Who knows, you might just start a movement.
Anger is a massive motivator. It’s what drove me to stick with journalism school and not switch majors and it’s what drive me to search out a new job (GovLoop!) two years ago.
Best scene ever. I’ve never seen the entire movie, I somehow stumbled upon that and used it as a monologue for an acting class. Being mad is definitely, as Stephen said, a great motivator. The only problem is when people utilize that anger for the wrong kind of change.
I agree about the power of anger. It’s what drove me to go back to school with the end goal of facilitating change from within. I think Corey has a good point, though. Channeling emotions is one thing; lashing out is another.
I see a lot of situations where people become angry and express their concerns, but don’t become agents of change. What’s the point?
I think at a certain point, people need to take responsibility for their own actions (or inactions), they need to stand up and say: “I’m a human being god damnit, and my life has value!”
(I used the word mad to tie it into the clip from the Network, but what I am really talking about is that fire in your belly.)
Well, that was cathartic….and inspiring. Follow up blog post forthcoming…
Anger conquers fear, for sure. It’s motivated many a person and many a nation – including ours – to take action in the past. It will again.
Great post. As an attorney I have at times felt the urge to put forth the passion and anger displayed by Al Pacino in And Justice For All, when he does his “I’m out of order, your out of order scene”.
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Not sure if the 30 second link to the video will work. But if you are not an attorney, I am sure that as a government worker you can relate to Pacino’s freak out.
Like David said, anger conquers fear, and it also conquers sorrow. I’ve been told growing up that sadness is a wasted emotion, which I don’t believe is true in every scenario, but there comes a point where you just have to buck up – we’ve all been there. There’s a way to be angry in a mature fashion, which is something that takes time to develop, and some people never do. I know if I wrote this, something probably happened which I didn’t like that day. And I would like to think that instead of walking around kicking things, I would do something constructive like write an awesome blog post about how we can all be courageous and shape our realities.
Corey – that is probably one of the best responses to anything I have ever written, thank you. 🙂
You’re welcome, and thank you for writing it!
A companion discussion: https://www.govloop.com/forum/topics/how-should-you-handle-anger-in-the-office