The last time I got really angry about something, I really didn’t.

It’s rare that something upsets me to the point of being angry anymore. Disgusted, yes. Irritated, sure. But angry, almost never. I credit four years of a psychotherapy degree, 15 years in practice, and six years clean and sober for that rarity.

Anger is always the second emotion.

Anyone who’s read a book on managing emotions knows this but fewer know what it really means.

People don’t actually get angry, but as one of my favorite instructors once put it, “They should all over themselves.”

Martha was one of those weird professors with a new age twist on pretty much everything. But having run out of grains of salt taking in her lectures, one day the epiphany finally hit me.

There are few things that get me so riled up that blood pressure medicine is the first remedy. Thanks to Martha, though, the second is a quick evaluation of the shoulds, oughts, musts, need-tos, have-tos, got tos and supposed-tos that overcome us all at times.

For the record, as if it really matters, my angering short list includes a)incongruous people who publicly profess one virtue, yet practice another in private. The other two include self-absorbed people and bald-face liars, both of which round out my personal anger trifecta.

But why?

Anger is the second emotion…second only to deep and erroneous beliefs that things and people should be different, better mannered, more fair, decent and, well, more like me.

Plenty of good people fit that bill, but there are plenty who don’t, won’t and don’t care to.

In my recovery from drug addiction, the Serenity Prayer was the cornerstone: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. The healing power of this prayer lived out within a congruous life has helped me address my angry moments therapeutically, long before they become destructive words or behaviors to myself and others.

People ‘should’ all over themselves.

If anger is the second emotion, then the taking of a big disgusting ‘should’ in your head is the first.

When I was a therapist, I used this simple illustration:

The speed limit is clearly marked 45mph. People should observe that limit. But however reasonable, life-saving or safe the speed limit, if I pull onto that street, I am bound to encounter an 80 year old blue hair in a Dodge dart going 20 and/or a dude in a Ford F-150 going 70. Failing to embrace this possibility beforehand is a certain set up for becoming angry and saying or doing things I will regret later.

Changing my expectation of situations and the behavior of other people to a language of “I hope that…It would be nice if… or I’d prefer that…” before I pull out into traffic, potentially mitigates against an angry response if my preference of what happens doesn’t actually come to pass. Our heads are full of mistaken beliefs and expectations such as these which embrace more of what ‘should or ought to be’ than what, in all honesty…and sadly…, really ‘is’ in this world. So when I’m stuck behind the blue hair, I accept the imperfection of the situation and arrange away around her, and maybe even chuckle at her timidity. When the truck blows by, though startled, I can save myself the rage and perhaps wonder if he’s late to watch the birth of his first born. It doesn’t make it right. It just makes the moment tolerable.

I’ve learned to be creative. Not so much for the sake of others, but for the sake of myself. “Be angry and sin not in your anger” is the key to control and the solution is to abandon the mind’s misbeliefs of a perfect world.

God, grant me the serenity in this imperfect world.
And God bless old Martha, wherever you and your blue hair are now after all these years.

I’ve bought more panties, bras and pads

than any gay man should.

More comfy purses to fit my arms

than any straight man would.

To beauty parlors, nail salons

and pharmacies with you.

Been here and there and everywhere…

I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Our little walks and tearful talks

and stories of your life,

Have filled the days with laughs so thick,

can’t cut them with a knife.

I get us lost, you drive me mad

and tell me what to do

But we always end up back at home…

I’m not sure what I’ll do.

The butt of jokes and puns of posts

that make so many happy

That Q-Tip hair, the clothes you wear,

you always look so snappy.

So many pics that you have nixed

and some you never knew

You make life fun to be your son…

I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Clockwork calling days and nights

to see how your day went

You always ask reciprocally,

The way that mine was spent.

I can’t imagine how it will be

some day when yours are through

You’re woven deep in my days and weeks…

I’m not sure what I’ll do.

No clue what I will do.

With a little luck, patience and a few decades, most 18 year olds eventually turn 50.  Some arrive a little sooner, but barring tragedy or developmental setback, nearly all arrive safely and on time with enough life experiences to have made it worth the wait.

When I was 18, so was my entire world.

A society of 50 something year olds was an unconscionable concept. It was a morgueful of the old and diapered on canes, cursing gravity through dentures between sips of chicken noodle soup someone else fed them. Nobody wanted to be there, they just arrived one day on a short bus to the grave.

At 18, 50 something was a distant age of unnecessary people.

I wish back then I’d known otherwise.

Today, the gears of my world run on 50 year olds.

I’m talking about all my friends from high school and before who made it here unincarcerated, consciences intact, generosities abundant and much kinder hearts for their journies.

The career I chose is one that helps the most unfortunate of the 50 plus generation who are indeed, diapered and caned, dentured, dying and worse. What was unconscionable at 18 is my everyday reality now where I work to add a little glitter to the not so golden years of the poorest group of senior citizens this country has ever created.

Thankfully, I don’t work alone.

I have a lot of 18 year olds who help me.

People like Steve, Misty, Lori, Cece, Tama, Jenai, Karen, Marc, Anne, Heidi, and all those who have re-emerged from my high school woodwork to support my cause. The captain of my high school football team, the first runner up at junior prom, the bass player from band, songleaders, student council secretaries, and even the weird kid from the lunch room…they all grew up and into really cool people who now partner with me 40 years later in my pursuits to feed, clothe and care for people we all once thought unnecessary and fortunately, have not yet ourselves become.

We are all still a bunch of dreamy-eyed 18 year old high school kids who eventually woke up to realize that all people are necessary to make this world a better place for all people.

So shout out to a lifetime of friends who still have my back just like we were 18 all over again, only kinder now, and up for challenges of life that make a difference.

“There’s a bad apple in every bunch” and other pacifying clichés are a premature resolve to situations for which there are no simple solutions.

Some people are thugs, some are racist, and some are overly enamored by power and authority. The human condition is littered with them about as inseparably as babies and bathwater.

Some. Not all.

Information technology, surveillance videos and camera phones deliver them to us 24/7 for rush judgments and have trained us to render instant clichés and unenlightened opinions before the next breaking news story takes the limelight.

But when that next limelight is but the same story in a new venue, clichés are useless. The power of fear these stories induce demands a more substantial literary device. Throwing a cliché at a bunch of dead people is no longer a solution.  Like thoughts and prayers, it never promised to.  If people were truly thinking and praying as much as they say they are, a solution would have emerged by now instead of just another useless platitude.

I don’t think the question is whether we are all equal, but rather, do we want to be?

We say we fight against discrimination between the differences of people at the same time we are mad at work differentiating ourselves, climbing the ladder from a lower rung onto one better and more distinguished. Success in American culture unfortunately lies squarely in the value of being better than. Where’s the pride in being equal?

Some who can’t seem to climb become thugs. Some who have climbed feel compelled to prove it with power and authority. And the rest of us either take sides or create clichés to exempt ourselves from the problem while secretly profiling the “some” as “all” but publicly offering only fleeting thoughts and shallow prayers of hope that the next time it won’t happen in my neighborhood.

There are no good apples.

All are bruised and imperfect in some way, yet misled by a private logic that they are “better than” in their fight to the top of the basket while denying the real truth that all apples were created equal and together, can make a very satisfying pie.

Chop off our own bruises and imperfections and we all look the same in the basket.

That is, if we will risk being equal as it was originally intended.

I once knew a man who had a serious brush with depth, failed to resurface, lost his life and, thank God, was never the same again.

Each of us is given one, perhaps two moments in a lifetime to dramatically change course if we want it bad enough, have vision to notice the opportunity and the courage to act upon it.

This world would have us believe that succumbing to the shallows is the only safe existence. Never venturing into unknown waters, we risk dying without discovery of our purpose or the endowment of a superpower which equips us to see past the drivel of the commonplace and into the extraordinary unknown.

Architects are the co-conspirators of the art world, for without them, every priceless, beautiful canvas would be forever grounded.

My dad was a great artist.

Each wall of our family home was a showroom of his life’s work. He taught us that to appreciate art, you must have equally high regard for the wall of its final resting place. Together, the form and function of the architecture on which it hangs either enhances or diminishes the beauty of each placement.

Maybe that’s where it all started for me, I’m not quite sure. But in addition to being an art-lover, I’ve always been a fan of extraordinary architecture and each of its artists.

Because architecture can’t just stop at being beautiful, it also needs to work, make sense, be functional, justifiable and explainable. It is art’s framework.

While the painter can imagine anything and create it on a canvas to be admired, the architect can’t stop there. Its critics wouldn’t allow it.

I am one of those critics.

If I take anything to the grave at all, it’s liable to be a very long list of questions to present to a master Architect who will have a lot of explaining to do.

There was a time when my finite mind attempted answers to all the infinite questions about certain phenomena, countless whys and why nots and general subjects about evil, tragedy and the reason bad things happen to good people. I’m sure I’ve drawn some wrong conclusions and missed some big picture explanations along the way but with the audience of the Master, I expect some answers about its form and function.

I don’t remember if it was a dream or just one of the random thinkings for which I’m famous, but a scenario unfolded before me that was at the very least, comforting and at the very best, became a cornerstone to my faith.

Here’s how it went…

I knocked on the door and was granted entry. That in itself was important, because it meant I’d met all the Architectural requirements. Boldly, I thanked Him and we were cordial, but I was the first to speak. “I have some questions of You, mister.” “I imagine you do,” He said, “but let’s follow the protocol and I promise you answers.” With patience as a virtue and satisfied with the negotiations so far, He asked me to follow the clouds to the left and at the junction, hang a right into the door marked “Blueprints.” I obliged and followed the path, promising to return with my list.

Upon entering, the room was one massive table with rolls of giant blueprints awash as far as the eye could see. “Pull the plans on Miller, Donald S., please,” I heard on the overhead, and a rather large set of the plans was unfurled before me.

Now these blueprints weren’t of architectural structures per se, but of connections and events of my so many years from single conversations long ago with strangers, random smiles and frowns I’d made over the years, all the way to complex situations I’d miraculously survived. Pretty much everything was there, and more than my memory could handle at the time. There were blue lines between the events connecting one to another, to another and to another. Tragic events, beautiful events, and my responses to each. It was, indeed, beautiful. An architectural masterpiece in blue, and every corner, joist and beam was precisely connected.

As I followed the lines of my actions and their effects, the conclusions were logical, functional and made so much sense, my list of questions erased themselves one by one.

I was there for maybe hours, maybe days if time was even a concept anymore. I was humbled and I cried as I saw the effects of my words and behaviors upon others and theirs upon me for all my existence. My entire list was explained away.

Emerging from the room, I made a left down the hall.

“Any questions?” He asked.

The collected curiosities of all my years had vanished. What had made no sense at all had been meticulously penned from the beginning of time in blue with all precise measurements and angles and structurally, was not only beautiful, but sensibly so. All my whimsical explanations had been dismissed as quickly as a fleeting deja vu.

I just hung there, awestruck, finally resting in peace.

And He stood there for an eternity, admiring the beautiful masterpiece on the wall before him.

And for the life of me, all I could admire was the Architect.

The box said 1,000 pieces, but never promised they’d fit together.

It’s now clear I’m not creating the picture on the cover.

In my much younger mind, it should have resembled that perfect cover photo where all the pieces fit so nicely together. But then, my life has been anything but.

The 2am text hit my phone like a tow truck without a conscience.

It had been many sober years since his name had popped up on my phone alongside the memories of that dark night when I almost lost my best friend.

“Can you call me?”

Some replies can wait until morning. I could tell this wasn’t one of them.

Two years into my sobriety three years back, this man saved two lives, one of which was mine.

Enough clean time under my belt to have known better that night, I let my puppy, Butch, run into the street, only to get plowed by a tow truck, left spinning on the asphalt in pain from a broken leg. Not having the $1,500 to get him medical attention, an angel named Peter stepped in with a credit card at the last moment to foot a bill I have never repaid.

He’d insisted it was a gift from a fellow dog lover and we both were in a fury over the tow truck driver who’d fled the scene.  My dog recovered, but apparently, Peter has not.

I phoned him.

He’d taken medical leave from work last winter and through a series of insurance foibles, he has been forced to use the last of his savings over the past six months to keep himself alive. Now on public assistance and fighting insurance companies and for his life, he needed someone, and stat.

For those who follow me, it’s widely known that my dog and I are an inseparable team. Now nearly four years old, he’s a Facebook celebrity and brings more joy to me than a life of drugs ever promised without delivering.  The only reason he’s still here is because of an angel named Peter who now needs a tow truck.

We talked of the dominoes of his life which had fallen in rapid succession, bringing him to reluctantly call on those who he thought might be able to help in his own time of need. And as these stories often go, apparently, I’m the only one who has returned his call.

I don’t make much in the non-profit world. I suppose that’s why it’s called non-profit. But I pay my rent and utilities and eat and love my dog and never forget visits from angels.

“I have never forgotten what you did for me and Butch, Peter, and despite how long it’s been, I also won’t be one of those people who don’t answer your call.”

Out of shame for asking, he cried on the phone and explained he wasn’t looking to be repaid. He’d forgiven the debt long ago and gently refused my offer three years back when we last talked.  He said he called me because I’d always seemed different from everyone else, even during the days I was awash in drugs and lost in addiction.

We’re meeting this week and I will be giving him weekly assistance from my checking account to help him get back on his feet.  And in my line of work, I can now offer him so much more than money to fish him out of the mess and stop the domino effect that has brought this angel down.

I came home and held my best friend on my lap and looked down at the scar on his hind leg from that once dark night. He glanced up at me, turned, and licked the scar as if to remind me that sometimes a tow truck needs a tow truck.