How do we summon the right blend of practical love and constructive anger?
How do we refrain from hating other people even as we fight fiercely against the hatred and danger they have helped unleash?
How do we cultivate cheerful buoyancy even as we neutralize the bigoted, autocratic poisons that are on the loose?
How can we be both wrathful insurrectionaries and exuberant lovers of life?
How can we stay in a good yet unruly mood as we overthrow the mass hallucinations that are metastasizing?
In the face of the danger, how do we remain intensely dedicated to building beauty and truth and justice and love even as we keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free?
Can our struggle also be a form of play?
—Robert Breszny
David Whyte writes: “ANGER is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt.
“Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care; the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.
“What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when we are overwhelmed by its accompanying vulnerability, when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or when it touches the limits of our understanding.
“What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.”
– From David Whyte’s book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
