It seems that everywhere I look these days, I come across people who are angry.

Not like, irritated angry, but deep-down-inside angry.

The kind of anger that surfaces when things aren’t going quite right, when we’re downright sick and tired of how things are—that kind of anger that arises out of discontentment of the soul.

I see it in our presidential election, I see it on social media, in the news, in my friends, and in my own personal relationships.

So I have to ask:  Why?

 

Last weekend we were watching my son’s soccer game and it wasn’t going well.  They boys haven’t won a league game all season—they’ve been working hard, but can’t quite get things straightened out.

Many of the kids on the team are relatively new to soccer, at least compared with the teams we’ve been playing, who seem to have been born with a soccer ball at their feet.

To nobody’s surprise, the losing has made for weary coaches, weary players, and weary parents.

When we’re weary, we tend to point fingers of blame, and that was the sad reality this past Saturday.

Parents were barking at other players from the sidelines, coaches had anxious-sounding instructions, and with every mistake the players made, a collective groan from a number of parents.

We watched as the wind was taken from the sails of these children. 

Heads started to droop, energy was sapped from the field, and kids started blaming each other for their lack of team performance.

It was ugly and saddening.

And such a true picture of a much larger reality…

 

Why aren’t the parents being more positive, offering encouragement rather than criticism with these 11 year olds?

Why has anxiety passed throughout this entire system of players, coaches, and parents? 

And on a larger scale, why does this seem to be the norm everywhere we look?  At our workplaces, on the freeways, in the newspaper headlines?

People seem more edgy than ever; more ready to explode at any given moment.

And as more and more people explode, anxiety perpetrates our lives, overtaking us by subtly sucking us in until we aren’t able to act differently.  And most often, we are completely unaware that it is happening.

My solution tends to be one of withdrawal.

I dream of living away from it all, on a hundred wooded acres, with no neighbors, no traffic, no conflict, and nobody to get mad at.

Of course, isolation would actually feed that anger.  It would give me permission to be righteously indignant with everyone and everything that doesn’t fit my construct of perfection.

And since nothing is perfect, I would invariably get angry that my hundred acres of forested land was too remote, or too densely forested, or not forested enough.  I would get angry that there aren’t enough wild animals on it, or that the animals that are present are irritating or annoying or dangerous.

You get the idea.

Isolation isn’t the cure to our anger. 

Neither is staying angry…

 

As these kids were running around the field, heads low and energy to match, I found myself taking a different approach.

After a missed kick, I involuntarily yelled out a it’s ok guys, keep your heads up! 

And then a good hustle, Chris!  Followed by a there you go guys, keep bringing the energy!

And you know what happened?

A few of the other parents started to relax.

The kids started to raise their heads, playing with a bit more pride and energy than they had previously.

Rather than anxiety permeating the system, positivity started to wedge its way in.

And it got me thinking:  What if this was our response to the imperfections around us?

What if we started saying hello to our neighbors more often?

What if we smiled at the cashier who was taking forever?

What if we paid for the coffee or the lunch for the person behind us in line?

What if we made the conscious effort, one little moment at a time, to refuse to get sucked in to the anxiety and instead offered positivity to those around us?

What if, instead of fixating on the why around life’s imperfections, we started acting more on the what ifs.

What if…