Vachon Imagined

What makes you angry?

Anger is often associated with something evil.

And it’s true—anger can produce some of the most harmful effects we experience as human beings.

We speak to each other terribly. We treat one another badly. I am guilty of it, just like anyone else. If you are alive as a human being, you have likely ruined someone’s day at some point, and left an impression that now lives in them.

In this way, nothing fully vanishes. It simply remains in the field of possibility until it is activated again in another moment, with another person, under another set of conditions.

But there is good news.

Human beings have the capacity to observe themselves.

It is one of the most extraordinary abilities we have, and one we often underestimate.

I can become angry at my husband, and once the storm has passed, I can look at my reaction objectively.

This is powerful.

Because now I can allow shame, guilt, or regret to arise without being consumed by them.

I can feel them and then shift my attention.

I can return to the life within me that is not anger—it is simply life.

And I can remember how loyal life is.

It gives me another moment.

Another chance.

Another opportunity to respond differently.

The way people present themselves is often not the full story.

People may describe themselves as peaceful, but their behavior tells a more complex truth.

At times, we are calm. At times, we are reactive. At times, we are overwhelmed with joy, like a child who has had too much sugar and cannot yet regulate the energy moving through them.

In those moments, real connection becomes difficult.

When we meet anger, we tend to give it a seat at the table.

We let it into our body, our words, and sometimes into the space between us and another person.

It belongs in human experience—but when it takes over the room, there is no peace present.

Only reactivity.

Only contraction.

Only noise.

And yet even that noise eventually returns to life.

This is something human beings can learn to see for themselves.

We do not need perfection to begin.

We need awareness.

We can notice anger arise, allow it to move through, and let it return without becoming it.

We can notice disrespect arise, and let it pass without building identity around it.

But when people are identified with these states, they often try to control others instead of understanding themselves.

They punish instead of observe.

They blame instead of reflect.

And control is not love.

It is fear trying to stabilize itself through others.

Real freedom is something else.

It is the ability to walk among people without becoming possessed by every emotional current that moves through them—or through us.

It is the willingness to take responsibility without self-punishment.

To notice what happened.

To learn from it.

And to practice again.

Not with shame.

Not with guilt.

But with attention, patience, kindness, and discipline.

Because what changes us is not the story we tell afterward.

It is what we are willing to see clearly in the moment it is happening.