Anger And Masculinity….

Many men seem to have the strange idea that anger is a justifiable masculine trait. How absurd right? “Every man gets angry,” they exclaim. Some would even insist that a man who doesn’t have anger problem is not a real man. Still can’t fathom how they came up with that line! Nothing could be further from the truth! Man’s natural tendency towards anger has probably started more wars, created more conflicts and ruined more homes than any other universal traits.

Anger seems to be a man’s way of expressing his frustrations, but it is a mistake to deem it a beneficial emotions. In fact, it inhibits sound judgement and thinking. A seventeen year old boy who had a fight with his girlfriend backed out of her drive way and laid eighty feet of scratch in front of her house before driving off. His anger robbed him of good judgement as he floorboarded the gas pedal at ninety-five miles an hour. He failed to navigate a freeway curve, and sped straight into eternity. Anger struck again and in seven minutes he was dead.

In Nigeria today and am sure in most countries, newspapers​ have been carrying reports lately from homes, hospital​emergency wards and welfare ​agencies that child abuse is alarmingly on the increase.  Over an estimate of 10,000 children died last year due to such mistreatment. What in the name of God cause any adult to so abuse a helpless child? Frustration? Anger? Spiritually manipulated? Pain and resentment? Depression? I’m sure there are many other reasons but anger seems to dominate. Brokenhearted parents and wards weep as they related stories of their “abnormal behaviour”, registering amazement that they were capable of such action. Well, they aren’t basically “abnormal”, they just never learned to control their anger, and when a sufficient level of frustration was reached, they committed an act which they regretted for life. Some parents also laments over their children​ who fell victim to these angry men and some of these children do not leave to tell the tales and for those that survive, they are left marred, damaged for life. They are left with scars that will never go away.

Such anger-laden behaviour is not limited to the lower socio economic members of society, although their living conditions may accelerate frustrations. I have also seen respectable people destroy their children through anger, even though they claim it was done ignorantly. Great men have fallen because they could not manage their anger. Ministers of God, dynamic preachers with the Spirit of anger. They have dual personality that they hide from everyone. Many women finds it difficult to relate nor communicate with their husbands for fear of being hit when he gets angry. Constantly they live in fear and die gradually every time they get abused. The Children are not left out in this saga, some pick up this trait others simply withdraw from their fathers. For the ones that pick this trait they run the risk of passing it down to their own children as well. “Angry father produce angry children”.
Do not allow the pressure of being angry or even to be angry make your spirit. Find a place where you can be yourself when that pressure comes up. Find what makes you happy and build on it, evaluate your strength and weaknesses and maximise your strength. Let God change the real you so that your hours at home, work, school, anywhere you find yourself can be pleasant and those who love you most will not be threatened.