Anger released

With the risk of drifting away from boating matters, I just wanted to follow up on the last post.

There has been a lot of anger floating around in the last weeks, for me personally and on a larger scale with the recent riots. Apart from the incidents related in my previous entry, I have also been really angry with the Church since I left it nearly 3 years ago. That anger, until recently, remained unexpressed and had festered inside me.

I have also been angry with my current employer. I work entirely unsupervised which is fine most of the time. However I am made to feel like a non person within the organisation. They do this by ignoring my emails and phone calls for stock or to resolve problems in the shop. They ignore requests for items we need like lights and tools etc. In two and a quarter years they have never once given me any feedback about the job I am doing. When I send suggestions about how we can improve, they might implement the suggestion but never acknowledge it has come from me. I haven’t seen anybody in a supervisory capacity since last Christmas! I could go on! The point of this is, until today this anger was unexpressed.

Two weeks ago I wrote to the head of the Church organisation I used to work for and expressed at great length how angry I was with the Church and where, in my opinion, it was going wrong. I certainly didn’t hold back and although I regret some of the more personal criticisms I levelled at the hapless boss, the relief I felt at finally expressing all my negative feelings was simply wonderful. It was like lancing a particularly badly infected boil. Today I repeated the exercise by writing to my current boss and expressing how I feel to be being treated with so little respect within his organisation. Again I feel like a coiled spring inside me has unwound, purely by expressing myself and letting the anger out.

Now I doubt either boss will take any real notice of what I have said, much less act on it, but I have said it and that’s what feels important. I wonder if the recent riots will do the same for an angry, fearful populace? Unfortunately I doubt it. You cannot keep people in a permanent state of fear and uncertainty without repercussions. Oh yes, I know most of the people involved were out to steal and damage without any thought of motive, but I also know that the messages coming from the state are that we should be financially terrified for the future, that many young people have little chance of securing good employment and that the planet itself is dying because of our lack of care. Follow that up with examples of the state machine acting with no sense of responsibility or morality (banking crisis, MP’s expenses, hacking etc.) and you have a perfect situation for the hope lacking populace to revolt.

I guess the question I am left with is – Is it healing enough to have expressed anger or do we also need the causes of our feelings to be addressed?

I promise, more boat related stuff next time!