Will you take responsibility for your own anger? If you are feeling angry, it is your own anger, isn't it? Someone or something sparked it, but it belongs to you. It arises from out of yourself, not from an outside vendor.

If there were not ego, would there be need to offend or be offended? If there were not selfishness, would anger roar? Being angry and speaking out are not the same. If someone has offended you, you do not have to abrogate your rights. You don't have to love the perceived insult. You can take care of it, or perhaps you can try to and perhaps not succeed, or perhaps you walk away, keeping the thorn in your side.

But the being angry or not being angry is within your realm. Anger often wins, overt or inverted. Anger may lash out, but anger also smolders, and it is in you that it burns. It is steam rising. What is inside you that you need anger to get it out?

If anger is so uncomfortable, why must you have it?

If someone has affronted you, isn't that enough? Must you castigate yourself with anger as well?

Anger is not apart from you. It erupts from you. How is it that you are so good at being angry? Even a little offense will get your blood boiling. How does anger arise so effortlessly when you have to tug and pull and haul love out? Love is the greatest energy in the world, and yet you have allowed anger to beat love so easily. Why is anger more fluent than love?

Perhaps you are ready for anger, prepped for it, and not so hasty to accept the presence of love. You are quick to spot offense and slow to see love. You look for offense. Your fists are ready. But love you do not believe in quite so readily, and your heart is reluctant to let it in and to give it out. A heart closed cannot be closed in only one direction.

When I say to look for love, I do not mean to be watchful of love coming to you or your needing a demonstration of it. I mean to be as quick to spot love as you are offense. The love you see does not have to be coming in your direction. You can see it wherever it is, to or from. Keep your eye on love, and you may not be so quick to hear offense, let alone take it.

You feel anger when you feel you have been disregarded. And what is this regard that you seem to require so much? What does it mean, after all, how much someone considers you? How much do you have to be considered? Must someone always hold a door open for you or conduct themselves in a manner befitting to you?

Do people come around you to suit you? Is that their purpose? Why do you have to be suited? Truly, if people came around you and tried only to suit you, you wouldn't like that either; you would tire of it, so how people suit you or not suit you isn't so important as you have been thinking it is.

In the big picture, what do respect and disrespect have to do with you? Respect and disrespect are little things, and little things do not have to ruffle your feathers.

Be respectful to others' needs, and your anger will vanish. You have bigger things to do than to be angry. Distill anger. Do not foment it. Anger is not your right. It is your mistake. You can do without anger. You can do better without anger. You can do better than anger.

Try sense of humor instead.