On that particular afternoon, many years ago, I wanted to be angry.
Our church leaders had announced a leadership meeting to be attended by lay leaders from an extensive geographical area. Our leaders had asked local members to volunteer to meet these leaders as they arrived at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and to transport them to their meeting in our stake center.
In those days, we owned a relatively new conversion van, which we used to haul our young and lively family around town and around the country on vacation. My van could comfortably seat several adults, and I thought it would be a pleasant experience to rub shoulders with these fine church leaders and provide this small transportation service. I volunteered, and was assigned a terminal number and a time for the pickup.
On the Saturday of the special airport trip, I carefully washed and vacuumed the van and made sure it had plenty of fuel. I placed an explanatory sign in the passenger window so it could be seen at a distance by travelers expecting a ride, and left for the airport with plenty of time to spare.
It was a sunny Saturday with relatively few travelers, and there was no way I could lose my riders in a crowd. In those days, it was illegal to leave your car unattended in the arrivals lane at O’Hare Airport, but as long as the driver stayed in the vehicle, it could remain at the pickup lane. I waited patiently in my car at the assigned gate, explanatory sign promptly displayed.
No one showed up. I waited nearly two hours before concluding that no one was going to be a guest in my car that day.
I had gone out of my way to prepare my car, had given up a good chunk of a pleasant Saturday afternoon, apparently for nothing. My first reaction was to be angry.
As a young boy, I was famous for my wild rages, the kind where I lost complete control of my words and actions and my vision even seemed red. When I was eleven or twelve, after one of these rages I said to myself, “You’re being a fool here. No one wants to be around you during your fits, and you should be embarrassed.” I had the good sense to take my own advice at this time and managed to avoid the red-tinged kind of anger. But I still became angry much too quickly.
As I grew older, I was able to slow down the fuse and actually delay the anger a while. Having children is a great fuse-slower—if parents give themselves the luxury of anger whenever their children do something they don’t like, they won’t enjoy the luxury of peace in the home.
I wondered, sitting in my empty car at the airport that day, how could I be angry at the stake presidency? They had only been trying to line up travelers and rides.
Could I justify anger toward the arriving church leaders who were undoubtedly told there would be a ride available? To fully consider this option, I thought about legitimate ways these leaders could have missed me. Perhaps they met each other at the terminal and decided to share a rental car. Maybe they had a relative or friend in Chicago with whom they were planning to stay, and who would be delighted to pick them up. It is possible they had changed their flights to accommodate such a visit. Maybe even (I now realize) they were looking for someone in the luggage area with their name on a sign—and I wasn’t there! Could some of these men be contemplating anger toward me? I didn’t feel comfortable with the anger option unless I could be sure that the leaders I had missed had INTENTIONALLY snubbed me.
Napoleon is reported to have said, “never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
I have known many of these leaders, and have never seen malice or meanness. Nor could I imagine these leaders to be incompetent in something as simple as air travel.
I propose a corollary to Napoleon’s admonition: “Don’t be too quick to assume incompetence, when miscommunication is possible.” And even, “miscommunication can be incorrectly assumed when competent individuals make independent decisions.”
So, my reasoning had brought me full-circle: malice, individual incompetence, misunderstanding, miscommunication, individual competence. So many reasons not to be angry!
A few years ago I had another chance to exercise the anger option. I had been waiting at a busy gas station to fill my car, and all of the pumps were full. Suddenly, one of the pumps right in front of me became available and I prepared to move my car into position. At that moment, another driver drove in from the street and rolled smoothly into MY spot, the one I had been waiting for. As she was filling her tank, she noticed me waiting and realized that she had taken the spot I had been waiting for. “Sorry,” she said, apologetically. Fortunately, I had thought about the experience from the other driver’s perspective. “That’s ok,” I responded without anger, “you didn’t know.” I did not miss any appointments for being slightly later than I had planned.
In the years since my would-be chauffeuring experience, I’ve been able to step back from the offenses I have received and consider the experiences from the other person’s perspective:
Could there be factors I don’t know about that caused this person to act this way? If so, the offense may be a simple misunderstanding, and I can’t justify anger.
Did the person cause offense due to ignorance or incompetence? If I decline to be angry today, that might help this person learn these lessons I have learned.
If the person has acted out of malice or meanness, in which case perhaps it is better to forego hot, impulsive anger in favor of productive action to address the societal offenses.
I have found that life is much more rewarding when the tendency to anger is reduced. Employment opportunities became available to me as a “relationship manager,” a liaison between different departments of my large corporation. I gained a reputation for being unflappable and skilled at reducing tensions, able to work with the “difficult” people no one else could work with.
Church service is also sweeter when anger is missing. I have had opportunities to serve that may have been unavailable to me if I had not learned how to control my tendency to anger.
Brigham Young once said, “He who takes offense when offense was not intended is a fool, yet he who takes offense when offense is intended is an even greater fool, for he has succumbed to the will of his adversary.” President Young reinforces my resolve to reserve the anger option for very rare and exceptional cases.
Driving my clean, fueled, empty van home that day long ago, I managed to reason my way out of being angry. Fortunately, through the intervening years, it has become second nature for me to avoid the anger option.