On ne fait point de distinction dans les espèces de
colères, bien qu’il y en ait une légère et quasi innocente, qui vient de l’ardeur
de la complexion; et une autre très criminelle, qui est à proprement parler la
fureur de l’orgueil. [La Rochefoucauld, Maximes.
i.159]
«We
make no distinctions between kinds of anger, though one may be slight and
innocent, that which arises from a passionate temperament, and another criminal, pride gone mad. »
The
first is an inner fire, the second an explosion that blasts the landscape.
***
Then there is the anger that set alight by anxiety does not burn at all but bristles
with electricity. The anger that springs from anxiety, swells into a stream
that rushes, slows to a trickle, seeps underground, and burbles up again; the
anger that will become another way of sadness.
***
La
Rochefoucauld has little to say about sadness, but he knows about
self-inflicted wounds as a way to withdraw.
Les q’on se fait pour sempêcher d’aimer, sont
souvent plus cruelles que les rigeurs de ce qu’on aime. [v:369]
«The injuries
we inflict on ourselves to keep from falling in love are often more cruel than
the cruelties of love itself. »
We
injure ourselves in practice for fear of failing in the game. We get ourselves to a nunnery before we can be exposed to “the slings
and arrows of outrageous Fortune.” Not
for us to “take up arms against a sea of troubles.”
And we find we are more injured by our
fear than we would have been by the world.
We know better than the world does how to hurt ourselves; and our hurts last
longer: the wounds become infected
and are slow to heal, if they heal at all.
It wasn’t an explosion we needed to worry
about at all; it was implosion.
***
On the
whole, it’s better to remember to take our meds.
f
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