Article June 29, 2015 Issue

Release from anger

Nancy Atkins

Yesterday my husband told me I had a chip on my shoulder. The fact that I was sitting in an easy chair munching from a bag of chips at the time probably had something to do with it. We both had a good laugh. But that comic moment started me thinking about what it means to have a chip on my shoulder when I don’t happen to be eating a snack.

The saying apparently goes back at least as far as the 1800s and represents the custom of placing a piece of wood on your shoulder as a dare for someone to come and knock it off, in the hope of taking part in a brawl. It has since come to represent the idea of holding a grudge or of harboring anger, and in the process sometimes expecting or even setting up others to provoke you. We might today also describe it in terms of choosing to be a victim as a way of venting one’s own resentment or pain.

Just as a loving parent would never want her child to be trapped in a vicious circle of bitterness and temper, neither would our divine Parent, who is Love itself, wish to see any of us suffer this kind of discomfort. In fact, God never causes His children to suffer. By reason of who we truly are as His spiritual likeness, we each not only deserve to experience harmony in our lives—we actually have it because we reflect His harmonious being. Harmony is the natural equilibrium of God’s ideas, not because God balances the good with the difficult, but because God is all goodness itself. Harmony obviously does not include the building up of emotional pressure that periodically requires letting off steam, burning all those who stand too close.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

‘The world has need of you’