There’s a story told by my grandfather in the Yoruba language.

A man turns up, furious about something, and lets out so many words of insult and aggravation towards another man.

He hurls abuse at the man for about an hour, and the man sits there and lets him get on with it.

When the man finally runs out of steam, the man asks him a question: “If you offer someone a gift and they decline it, to whom does the gift belong?”

The man, a little thrown, says it belongs to the one who offered it. “Then I decline your anger,” says the man. “It’s yours to keep.” “Ti eniyan ba so wipe yio ba iya mi, ma si fun ni esi wipe K’o to ba, yio ya lona”

I used to be angry. Quite a lot, in fact. It didn’t take a lot to get me angry. And it’s that phrase — that idea — that’s had me thinking. What do we mean when we say “that’s made me angry”? Can you feel where I’m going with this? This idea might actually make some angry as it goes, because what I’ve realized — as someone working to retire his anger — is that no one makes us angry.

Nothing makes us angry.

“You made me angry” is actually an unconscious attempt to hand your anger to someone else. The one declaring “you have done this — you are blowing this up” is fundamentally blowing it up for themselves while attempting to abdicate responsibility for their own internal world. Unable to process their own emotions, they rupture. And, in the wake of that phenomenon, all too often, they throw it in the face of others.

Of course, we all do it, don’t we? Ergo, we throw it in their faces, too. And I think this is worth analyzing, albeit for a minute or two, since it turns out that in this drama-obsessed existence, we’ve normalized this behavior to the point where many of us simply accept it as reality. But it’s not.

And what happens next?

Well, typically, it’s one of three things, isn’t it? The moment we’re met with another’s anger, our amygdala — the ancient brain managing our survival instincts — fires within a fraction of a second, before we’re even aware of what set it off, which means reasoning goes out the window. More accurately, the horse bolts out of the gates long before reasoning gets a look in. And once that process is in motion, we’re switching to what’s known as the sympathetic stress response, which takes one of three directions: fight, flight, or freeze.

We’re in it then, aren’t we? We’re activated. Thanks to someone else’s inability to manage their own emotions — and our innate response to it as a result of our own conditioning — we’re caught up in the drama of it all. We’ve fallen for the illusion of separateness and the more pressing illusion that our interpretation is all there is.

When someone blames us for their own anger, what they’re actually saying is “I’m angry, and I’ll put the root of it on you”, rather than asking: “why does my anger own me?” Wouldn’t that be a trip? Imagine if we all did that.

Of course, it’s much easier to point a finger outwards than it is to sit with the discomfort of one’s own triggers. Yet that, right there, is the game on offer. Can I see my anger as my problem rather than yours? Can I see that I’ve absolutely no right to vent my anger at you — no matter who’s right or wrong? Can I see that right and wrong are largely subjective concepts, both of which are often distorted beyond recognition in the heat of the aforementioned emotion? Can I reframe what’s happening during the flashpoint — the trigger? That I am triggered — and whilst the trigger may certainly have been inspired by my exchange with you, my being triggered really has nothing to do with you. Simply put: you did not make me angry. Point of fact: that’s not possible. Only I can make myself angry.

Still with me? Or has this idea triggered you? God knows that in recent years, my remaining calm in the face of others losing their shit has occasionally triggered them. When I managed to do it, that is.

One can find great solace as one practices staying calm in the face of anger. But we must learn to look beyond it — at the loving awareness inside each soul behind it.

Noticing our triggers

But how do we practice this? How can we develop a newfound awareness for our triggers? Well, the first step is just that: awareness. Honing loving awareness of our emotional reactions. Without judgement. Simply learning to observe them. And in the noticing, also inquiring: what was happening just then inside me? What were the circumstances? Why was I triggered? What did the incident remind me of? Which part of me is reacting, and what are they trying to protect me from? And where in my body does this anger live? How does it manifest in physical terms? So, we write this down, or make mental notes. In the noticing, we’re practicing metacognition. We’re subtly unblending — demising ourselves from our angry parts. We’re creating space.

Accepting the isness

There’s a technology available to all of us which lies in the truth that perspective is a healer. If I live my life only looking through my own lens of conditioning, unwilling to accept it exists, incapable of seeing that through practice, I can change the lens’s shape and size, then I know what I know. Conversely, with such a limited view, I am not able to see that I do not know what I do not know.

If I become willing to accept that I do not know what I do not know, then I might well be more open to another’s perspective. I need not agree with that perspective; I merely need to see that it is theirs. And if I can accept that, then I can release my white-knuckle grip on the truth — on what’s right and what’s wrong.

Pro tip: you cannot be right and free. And with this technology, I can transcend the anger — both mine and yours. This is not dissociation; it is the practice of detachment. And we do well to analyze the difference. Dissociation numbs us to what’s happening; detachment lets us feel every bit of it without being dragged along. Seeing and accepting the isness, and thus dissolving any need for emotional reaction. You cannot be right and free, because to be right — to want to win — you have to hold on. And each and every time I choose to follow mind and hold on, I am not free. And the Buddha reminds us, as I’ve written before, that clinging is the root of all suffering.

Declining the gift

What then follows healthy detachment is a calm and collected declaration: you do not have my permission to project your anger at me. I don’t give it; I won’t give it. This energy is yours. The trigger is yours. Your ability to healthily process emotions is yours and yours alone. Now, whether you are right and I am wrong, or whatever variation is up for debate, one thing is for sure: I’m simply not invested enough to allow myself to be attacked, or, conversely, triggered into attacking you. Nothing good shall come of it. Monkeys will run amok. Bad blood will flow. Mindlessness will rule. Separateness will be amplified, and we’ll both be pulled back into the game where peace exits stage-left.

I mentioned earlier that I was once an angry man. I still have the capacity to lose my temper along with everyone else. But I’m trying to approach my anger differently these days. On the few occasions that it arises, I ask myself from where does it derive. That move of introspection before the default setting of external blame is all of it. And it only comes through practice and through the remembrance of what peace feels like as a more blissful alternative to dissonance.

I choose mindfulness. Despite its rocky road. Regardless of how hard it is sometimes to calm mind’s unflinching refusal to let go, to soften, to surrender. I choose mindfulness because inside those moments when I can pry open my mind’s grip, and create just enough space for me to breathe and unblend and unmesh from mind’s energies, wowsers … the bliss that washes over me … The lightness … It’s difficult to put into words, ineffable as pure liberation is. It’s like levitating out of the goo, having waded through chest-high treacle. That’s how dense mental energy is. We just get so used to it that treacle feels normal, when all the while, what’s available to us — the real normal — is the levitating.

Next time

So, next time you find yourself declaring that another made you angry, try stopping and asking the truth of yourself: why does my anger own me? What is being triggered inside me right now, and how can I understand it better? That’s taking responsibility. If you can’t do that, well, that’s okay, too. You do you. But don’t be surprised when people decide you don’t have permission to project your anger at them. Don’t be surprised when folks choose peace over chaos.

And if you’re the one on the receiving end, try not to allow your triggers to react. Instead, take a breath and respond: this isn’t mine; it’s yours. You don’t have my permission to do this. I shan’t take it. And walk away. Because nothing ever good came out of two monkeys spitting at each other. And peace is a state to which we all aspire — even if we don’t quite know it yet.

Nobody can make you feel a certain way. Sure, they can do or say a thing that’s an echo that triggers an old wound inside you, but the wound is yours. And the ability to work differently with it is yours, too.

Some thoughts for you to reflect upon

1. When did you last tell someone they’d made you angry? What were you feeling in the moment just before the anger arrived?
2. Which part of you reaches for anger first, and what is it trying to protect you from?
3. Where does your anger live in your body, and how does it make itself known before you’ve consciously noticed it?
4. When someone else’s anger lands on you, where do you tend to go: fight, flight, or freeze? Where do you think you learned that?
5. Is there an argument you’re still replaying? What would it cost you to be free rather than right?

A possible practice: whose gift is this?

Next time you feel the heat rising, whether it’s yours or it’s coming at you, pause before you respond. Take one slow breath in through the nose, then let a longer breath out through the mouth, longer than the in-breath. Feel your feet on the floor. Then ask yourself the Buddha’s question: whose gift is this?

If the anger is yours, notice where it lives in your body and stay with it for three breaths without acting on it. If it belongs to someone else, you’re free to decline it.

Later, once things have settled, jot down what happened, of what the moment reminded you, and which part of you wanted to react. Over time, you’ll start to see the patterns, and the patterns are where the real work lives.