Sacred Wrath
I am
irritation.
I am
annoyance. I am
the prickly pit that sits in the space between each breath that never quits and spits in the face of equanimity, predicting calamity, driving you to insanity for refusing to give place to your subjective truths. I am
the proof positive that you are made up of negatives, filled with expletives. The dishonorable discharge of your id; that voice of your inner kidding yourself if you think you can blink and breathe away the desire to speed through this moment that Einstein knew would last a lifetime when you spurn my right to earn you a fully human experience, without the ‘shoulds,’ and ‘musts,’ and ‘proprieties at all times’, forcing a false deference to manufactured goods more easily perished than cherished, because I am just as divine as the sublime heights to which you climb.
I am
the sweat and grime that lets you know that you worked for it, put in the time. I am the prologue that cuts through the fog and lights the path. I am
sacred wrath bubbling beneath the barely bound glory hounds who strain for applause because you all somehow decided that
I’m better off derided than praised. And as you’re raised to frigid, fragile heights, still
I am
there to spare you the hollow-point obliteration of gun-to-head conformity; let me impress on you the enormity of your space, your form, your being. Let me whisper to you of what I’m seeing and release you from fleeing that which will not destroy, but define.
I am the rebellion of being that knows you are just fine whether you believe it or not because I refuse to let you be caught in a net gain of self-rejecting pain.
Honor me, and be free; deny me and be forever held in a crypt of life lived nondescript a legacy of obedient, invisible silence praised only by those who trade your bones for stock in social bondage.
-rrf
----
I think this poem begs a bit of an explanation. Anger, irritation, annoyance, frustration... this is one of the pockets of emotional experience that I find myself repressing and denying out of discomfort and avoidance. I don't like the idea of feeling anger, much less using it. In the balance of yin and yang energy, I recognize that I am sometimes out of balance, finding myself feeding the yin (welcoming, softness, openness, receptiveness, yielding) and putting it on a pedestal over yang (firmness, action, initiating, expressing). I tend to categorize my emotions along these lines and also notice a pattern of preferring to lead with a persona of softer (what I tell myself are more socially desirable) features. Lately finding myself drawn to some of the philosophical aspects of Jungian psychology, I've been more and more interested in driving my personal growth through shadow work; this poem is an attempt at processing through some of the discomforting feelings of irritation, frustration, anger, wrath - that whole spectrum of "violation emotion" that gets activated when a boundary has been crossed, a perceived wrong committed, or a personal expectation unmet.
The shadow, as Jung talked about it, is made up of the parts of ourselves that we deem unfit for consumption. These qualities violate our expectation of self and contradict the persona we lead with in public life. I tell myself, "If people really knew how selfish and self-absorbed I really am, how petty, angry, entitled, etc..... nobody would want me." In response, I (we) try to minimize, repress, subjugate or disown these parts. I lead myself with shame, because the reality is, if *I* acknowledge how petty, angry, etc. I am, *I* don't want myself. I project anticipatory rejection onto others because I'm playing an internal game of self-rejection, borne from judgment and fear of my own multi-dimensional self.
Jung (and those who practice based on his philosophies) argued that confrontation and integration are the necessary steps we need to undergo in order to avoid these denied parts from bubbling up in other unsavory ways, like depression, anxiety, judgment, projection, violence... essentially, if there's something that you look at in society and go "yeeeeeechhhhh," that's the collective shadow, and it's also your shadow resonating with it. It's an indication that there's work to do; because when we take ownership of ourselves, and seek to understand our darker parts, we can honor their utility in our lives. It's in that space of integration that we begin to realize that there is nothing about being human that is inherently flawed. Everything (to borrow from one of Jung's contemporaries, Alfred Adler) serves an important purpose, whether it is immediate, future, individual, or evolutionary - everything exists in our subjective phenomenology with utility (we call this teleology of behavior). So, accept this poem as what it is - a flawed, shadowy human being, just like yourself, who is trying to understand his uglier parts, to embrace them, and find the meaning in them. I hope it can inspire similar introspection for you!
