Letter to Mr. or Mrs. Angry (Yep, That’s You and Me)

THE MR. MEN SERIES HAS BEEN A HIT FOR DECADES. Roger Hargreaves’ creations have, of course, swept the Western world and beyond, as we harmlessly yet poignantly resolve and identify our personalities in his characters.

Enter Mr. Angry. He actually appeared later, much later, than the original 1970s series of books and television programs. He made his entrance in 1995-1997 in the Mr. Men and Little Miss series aired in the U.K. and the U.S.

But this is not about some strangely funny cartoon character. It’s not even a history lesson. It’s a much more serious subject than that.

It’s a letter to each of us. It’s a message to the soul of every human being that feels explosively with the emotions. Fears, troubles, despairing and anxieties speak to us via our anger; the secondary, ordinarily hidden-from-view emotion. For we negate the primary, more truthful, emotion the moment we give voice and effect to our anger for the things that aren’t working out. Frustration makes way for avenging as we take untidy matters into our own hands.

So what, already?

Well, of course, there’s always the relational component—the people, and rapport we have with them, that we harm or destroy (beyond forgiveness and requited trust). This is the precious thing we hardly think about; the thing we burned in a second’s madness.

We’re loath to forget these. They make our lives mean what they mean for the vast part, yet we toss them, like a piece of meat to the wolves, as the vitriol drips and spews, gushing forth.

A moment recently where I calmly resisted spoiling a good few relationships of my own—the moment painfully paralysing, perplexing and confusing—led me to again ponder, ‘What is it that helps us in those shrieking moments of inner madness?’ And, ‘What is it that levels the emotional ship as it lists perilously from side to side?’

For me I was thankful. I wanted to blow but didn’t. A strange foresight went operational—the sort of foresight that doesn’t always ‘turn out’ I can tell you. It was the foresight of well-founded faith—a faith that never fails, if we invest of, or express it, entering into it.

Notwithstanding the aforementioned; anger is divisive like nothing else on earth. We ought to be positively fearful of it—enough to do something to prevent it.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.