What We Do When We Lose Our Tempers

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 30, 8 December 1950, Page 7

What We Do When We Lose Our Tempers

By Stapleton Hall

How should we treat the badtempered man? It is to be feared that there are few clubs, institutions, offices, shops, factories or other places of business which are not at some time or other faced with this problem. The bad-tem-pebed man has the unhappy knack of' creating a little hell at home or at work. Sometimes it is said of him, “He is not a bad fellow, but he is quick-tempered.” But can a bad-tempered person be rated as a “good man”? It is a real question.

Anger has its roots in instnct and passion. This fact leads many people to believe that they cannot help being angry. They were, they tell us, born with a bad temper, and so there is nothing further to be said. That suggestion would save some condemnation if it were true. But it is not true. What is true is that some -people have naturally quick tempers which land them in difficulties before they know where they are, and so make the task of self-discipline difficult, but that is not the end of the matter. In its primitive form anger is a natural reaction against something which thwarts us, but it soon passes beyoud this stage. The man at the office or on the job who raves for half an hour because someone has moved his papers or mislaid his tools is rightly said to be “in a passion”; he has passed from the instinctive to the highly emotional stage. His emotions may be joined by the mind, as when he broods all day over this slight to his importance. He becomes unbearable when his will goes over to the enemy, as it were, and, in spite of explanations and apologies, he deliberately continues in an angry state. The preliminary stage of anger, impatience, causes trouble to almost overcome and much to those who are naturally of a quick temper; indeed, it may never be wholly overcome. Loss Of Control

If impatience may cause hurt to others, passion causes tenfold more; further, the complete loss of selfcontrol which strong passion produces may find its expression not only in words, but in deeds. Some people are prepared to condone passionate anger on the ground that it cannot be helped . (which is not true), or that it is soon over, but they do not approve a sulky temper; there is indeed little excuse for it.

Impatience and even passion may be more or less instinctive, but sullenness is deliberate, and a very grave defect of character. In this kind of anger a man broods over real or fancied injuries or exaggerates bad qualities, or what he regards as the bad qualities of the person he is angry with, and deliberately encourages and prolongs the' irritation and resentment not infrequently planning, or at least siring revenge.