When you are hot under the collar and you feel you have to let off steam, get a punching bag or run two miles. Do not vent your barrage of steam on another living being. At such times, you are too hot to handle.
 
Yes, yes, you may be perfectly right, but what does that have to do with anger? Everyone thinks he or she is right. The true cause of temper is temper, not what someone else says or doesn’t say.
 
It is difficult for you or anyone when another cannot seem to listen to what you are saying, yet no other is the cause of your anger. Whatever is going on stirs up something in the past, and you mix up the present with the past. Let the past recede. It isn’t going anywhere. Let it go. It is your ire and your confusing what happens now with what once happened in the past. You don’t have to relive the past. Reliving the past is putting yourself and others into an unfavorable role.
 
It is like you choose an immutable cast of characters, and it is hard for you to get beyond them. You keep them handy. Truly, dear one, you find a reason to be angry. It seems like it finds you.
 
You know it is never worth it, and, truly, it’s not necessary. Perhaps once you were at the mercy of others, yet, now, you are at the mercy of yourself. You dig up the past and cast the present into the past. No longer paste an old movie reel onto the present. This is what you have been doing.
 
An angel might come your way, and a shadow from the past falls over the angel, and you react, not to the angel before you, but to a semblance from the past. And so you play old-fashioned music as if you had no choice. You do have choice, and it’s for you to exercise it.
 
Never do you want to replay an old scene that didn’t work out well in the first place. Learn a new scene. Rewrite the old. Better yet, simply throw it out and start all over.
 
You want to get out from under. You deserve to get out from under. You deserve a top-notch script.
 
Your old shoes are too tight. They never really fit. They most assuredly don’t fit you now. In fact, go barefoot. The true you doesn’t rant and rave. Nor do you have to. You really don’t favor loss of temper over peace and brotherhood.
 
Others are not to blame for what they may remind you of in the crevices in your mind and heart.
 
Perhaps everyone in the past didn’t honor you. They didn’t listen to you. You were not heard. You did not feel heard.
 
Beloveds, everything is an idea. Let old ideas go. Reach new ideas. Take on the idea that now you are heard. Now you are listened to. And now you listen as well. Now, for a moment, you put aside your wailing heart and listen to your friend whose heart you have battled. Put down your weapons. There is no need to uphold yourself. The perceived need to uphold yourself provides the cry of war.
 
And no longer carry the backlash of the world.
 
Perhaps you strike first so that you are not stricken. It’s all for nothing. War does not make any more sense than pride in dignity does. Let pride in ego go. Ego is not triumph.
 
Yes, dear ones, the past wounds your ego. Your ego does a number on yourself.