The challenge of the holidays

I must confess: I've lost it 2 or 3 times so far this holiday weekend. I am not the serene being I aspire to be -- STILL. A work in progress, indeed.

The only thing I can say in my defense is that I do seem to be "catching" the anger a little sooner. I definitely notice it arising (as opposed to not noticing, until I'm in full rage mode). And I definitely see its causes. 99.9% of the time it's around an issue of control (see earlier post on that subject). My "special someone" is here in the house all weekend and that ups the ante, in terms of potential blow-ups. My challenge is right in my face all the time, so to speak.

A lot of us deal with this during the holidays. Families gather and instead of Norman Rockwell, we have sparks flying. The great irony of getting together with people we love!

It takes an enormous amount of self-awareness to see yourself barreling down the runway toward an anger attack, and put the brakes on. Sometimes this weekend, I have not been successful. But at least a couple of times I was successful. Yea! I need to remember that, and be grateful for those small victories.

The halfway mark!

Here they are, all 500 of them, with the little human who, minutes before this picture was snapped, told me I was "making good progress" in controlling my anger. Out of the mouths of babes....

Self-consuming fire

Last night, the temperature dipped into the 30s for the first time this season -- a lovely, chilly fall night -- so we fired up the fire-pit table on our back porch. I pulled a chair close and sat there, watching the fire, for a long time.

I've always loved fire -- its warmth, the crackling, the musky smell of smoke, the mesmerizing effect of watching the flames. Somehow it quiets my soul. But until now (a period when I'm thinking a lot about anger), I never paid attention to how fire consumes itself.

We put a medium-sized log in the fire pit and before long, it was engulfed in flame. Awhile after that, its shape began to change. It got smaller and smaller until -- of course -- it was only a bed of glowing-red embers. And the flames were gone.

This is nothing new, the metaphor of anger as fire. But somehow I never really "got" it until now. I watched that little fire do its work of destruction and I couldn't help but think of my anger, consuming everything that feeds it. Leaving nothing but a cold pile of ashes. And afterwards, the inevitable clean-up.

Even worse, fire tends to spring up again. And again. It finds new fuel. Exhausted firemen in California put out one wildfire, only to have another spring up nearby.

What's the answer? How to prevent fire, or anger, from breaking out? I don't quite know yet.

That's why I keep folding these paper cranes, day after day. Almost at 500, by the way ... halfway to senbazuru.

A series of tests

Another milestone today: 200 cranes. One-fifth of the way to my goal.

Meanwhile ... many tests in the anger department. It started Wednesday night, when some long-buried adoption issues erupted with two of my three daughters. Very heart-rending stuff, which I don't want to go into in great detail because that would invade their privacy. Their life history, which is troubled, is their story. It belongs to them, not me. But it's painful for all of us. When my husband got home from work, he found three of the four of us in tears.

At one point, I realized it was useless to try and reason with a very upset pre-teen, so I retreated to the kitchen to clean up the dinner pots and pans. My oldest daughter followed me in there and said -- and I quote -- "Are you mad?"

Which I consider a huge, massive step in the right direction, both for her and for me. For her, because she is usually very closed in her emotions and very shut down to me. It's the source of a lot of our most painful family dynamics. So, here she was, reaching out to me, COMMUNICATING with me, even feeling that it was safe to ask me such a provocative question.

I turned to her, started crying, and said, "No, honey, I'm not mad. I'm just sad. And kind of confused. I don't know how to help you and your sister. I have tried everything I know."

And as those words were coming out of my mouth, I realized what a great sign this was: Even though I was highly frustrated -- usually a red-button anger trigger for me -- I had kept my cool and walked away from the situation. And I'd kept my cool so well that she wasn't even sure I was mad. She had to ask. So obviously, I hadn't been raging or yelling or stomping around -- the usual symptoms of an anger attack, with which they're familiar.

That precipitated some deep, authentic communication, a few hugs and more tears. Over all, a cleansing experience.

A few days later, we were having a difficult Sunday afternoon. An overload of school projects and homework and other chores, and it was getting late and I realized the entire day was shot to hell -- no time for getting outside for exercise or enjoying the fall weather. My long "to-do" list was not going to get accomplished. So I started to lose it. And at about the point where I would usually start yelling, I just buried my head in my hands and said, "OK, I need to take a minute and breathe." To which, my youngest daughter -- she who is most sensitive to my anger -- said, "OK, Mommy, that's fine." And I could tell from her voice that it was fine. She totally understood and she didn't feel threatened that I was taking a time-out.

Maybe we're getting somewhere.

Working on it

Here they are ... 150 origami cranes, made by my own hands. Progress toward the goal of senbazuru (1,000 cranes in 100 days).

Believe it or not, those 30 minutes spent folding colored squares of paper have become a favorite part of each day. It's calming, it's simple -- and I just plain like doing it. The rest of my life is so complex, so rushed and noisy and mindless. But at least for that half-hour, I know I will have some peace. And I look forward to it.

As for anger, this project has it very much on my mind these days. So I've become a tiny bit more observant, I think, of the arising of anger. This is a core practice of Buddhist meditation, watching the arising of phenomena -- whether emotions, mind states or bodily sensations. And of course, the better I become at noticing the arising of anger's white heat, the better chance I'll have (theoretically) at catching it before it overtakes me.

I'm working on it ... just as I'm working on the cranes.

The battle against anger

Here is another wonderful quote about anger. It's by Kenneth Kraft, author of "Inner Peace, World Peace: Essays on Buddhism and Nonviolence."

"One need not wait until war is declared and bullets are flying to work for peace, Buddhism teaches. A more constant and equally urgent battle must be waged each day against the forces of one's own anger, carelessness and self-absorption."

Dalai Lama on anger

Today's "Daily Buddhist Wisdom" quote, from Beliefnet:

"If we live our lives continually motivated by anger and hatred, even our physical health deteriorates."

-- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Day One of 100

Ten little paper cranes, in all colors of the rainbow, perch next to my keyboard as I type this. My experiment in senbazuru has begun.

I started this afternoon, when the house was quiet and I was alone. The first sheet of paper to come randomly out of the pack was -- aha! -- red. Deep, fiery red. The color of anger. Couldn't have scripted this better, myself.

I thought, after several practice sessions, that I was ready. I'd whip out Crane No. 1 in a flash. Just like I'd been doing this all my life.

Nuh-uh.

I hate to admit it, but that first crane took me 30 minutes to create. A full half-hour. (By contrast, the people in the how-to videos whip one out in about four minutes flat.) Jeez, how humbling. My fingers were totally illiterate. What started out as a nice, smooth wafer of origami paper quickly turned into a wrinkled mess.

As my frustration grew, I could feel my heart beating faster. I got so hot I had to get up and turn on the ceiling fan. I was muttering under my breath.

And then it hit me: This is what anger feels like in the body. The books all tell you to stop and examine your symptoms, to observe (and defuse) anger before it takes you over. But I'm usually too busy yelling, right from the get-go. By the time I "notice" that I'm angry, the cat is, so to speak, out of the bag -- claws unsheathed and fangs bared.

So little Crane No. 1, an angry red, offered me the very first lesson of this experiment. Amazing. When I finally got him finished, he didn't look too good. I set him on the desk and he promptly fell over. Still won't stand up straight.

Even so, I predict he'll be my favorite, out of all 1,000.

What this is all about

I have a problem. A problem millions of people have. It's called anger.

I received this gift from my father, who received it from his mother, who received it from her father. And so on. You get the picture. This is nobody's fault. It's just the genetic stream that flows from one generation to the next -- a long bloodline of heartache.

For half a century I've carried this millstone, and for many of those years I've searched for ways to defeat the demon and pull it out by the roots. Hundreds of hours of therapy. Antidepressants. Reading every book on anger that I could find.

I think I even chose my spiritual path (Buddhism) because it offered some hope of inner peace. Maybe if I meditated long enough, and ardently enough, I would become the saintly, calm person I longed to be.

Nothing worked, really -- not in the long run. And now that I'm a parent, I realize the frightening potential for passing this on to my children. I try mightily to contain my temper around them but as any parent knows, kids will test your patience to the max. My children have seen me rage, I cannot lie. And the other day my youngest daughter told me something very painful: "Mommy, when you get mad, I get scared." I was driving the car and she was in the back seat, for which I was grateful. She couldn't see the tears streaming down my face.

I didn't sleep well that night, and sometime during the long, slow hours an image took shape in my mind -- a white paper "peace crane." I'd read about them long ago. It's a beautiful part of the Japanese art of origami, or paper folding. The crane is a sacred bird in Japanese culture, symbolizing long life. Traditionally, if you make 1,000 origami cranes -- an act called "senbazuru" -- your wish will come true. If you give your senbazuru to a sick person, he or she will be healed.

The paper crane became a worldwide symbol of peace after a young girl who survived the nuclear blast at Hiroshima made an intention of folding 1,000 paper cranes. She died of leukemia before she could complete the task.

So I decided: I'm going to fold 1,000 paper cranes. My own act of senbazuru. Each crane I make will be a whispered wish to let go of my anger. As my fingers create a bird out of a piece of paper, I will ask for the peace I lack.

I have no illusions that after I've completed this exercise, I will be instantly cleansed of anger. I know that making 1,000 paper cranes can't magically wipe away decades -- generations -- of a character flaw. But I also know that intentions are strong. If I can focus my mind and heart on the act of folding these cranes, day after day, if I can open to the power of such a simple, mindful act ... maybe something will happen. Something not exactly miraculous, but at least better.

If anger is a problem for you, too, or if you're fascinated with the legend of the 1,000 paper cranes, please join me on this journey. I'll begin October 1.