A New Year's resolution

Today begins a new year, and people are making resolutions. Mine is obvious. I've already been writing about it, thinking about it and trying to put it into practice for months.

And as I draw nearer to senbazuru (930 cranes today), the responsibility of wrapping up this experiment -- effecting some kind of lasting change in myself -- looms like a giant shadow. It's scary.

Over the holidays, I fell off the wagon often. It was a disaster. Only a few times did I manage to control my anger and keep it inside -- which, of course, is no more healthy and no less injurious than letting it out. Anger is anger, whether expressed outwardly in a tantrum (and thus hurting someone else) or nursed silently, eating away at my fiber.

The only hopeful sign is that one afternoon, a couple of days ago, I had a small revelation. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing that will banish my anger forever. But it felt important. It felt like hope.

Somehow, in 40+ years of battling this demon, this one tiny fact has eluded me: I feel physically bad when I'm angry. It's NOT some addictive, pleasurable, adrenaline high. Quite the opposite. It feels like caustic poison has been injected in my arteries and is ripping through me. It's painful. My heart pounds in a way that is frightening, out of control, like the first flutterings of a heart attack. My head hurts. My skin smolders.

That afternoon, I realized that I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to be angry. I sat down on the floor of my bedroom, in a pool of winter sunlight pouring through the window, and just breathed for a few minutes. It felt .... exquisite. Peaceful. And that's what I crave. That feeling. It was very clear. I put my fingertips together, in gassho, in the sunlight, and the pleasurable touch of skin to skin sunk into me deeply.

I'm struggling to describe this adequately, but it felt authentic. And simply understanding this, knowing that I can CHOOSE pleasure, I can choose a peaceful, calm feeling instead of anger -- that felt enormously hopeful.