Cari-bein'

Can you hear me now?

Yesterday I read a post about anger in someone's journal. She wrote about feeling angry and not wanting to lash out--wanting instead to transform that angry energy into positive movement and action. She asked for comments on how others do that. One person commented that it sounded like she didn't feel okay with just feeling the anger. I related to all of it, because I, too, was feeling angry yesterday. And like the journaler, I wanted to transform those feelings into something PROactive rather than REactive. AND, I reminded myself that it's okay to feel angry. I reminded myself that often in trying to be more "enlightened, " I sometimes discount my anger as being unjustified, even when it is justified.

For a couple of months last year (late summer and early fall), my left ear was kind of plugged up. It started when I got some water in my ear while swimming that didn't completely drain. That was ostensibly the reason for it. Some days it would be better, some worse, but it went on for awhile. During that period, I was walking almost every day with a pal who was temporarily our neighbor. We know each other because she was my predecessor in my job and then worked at our office on a very part-time basis in another capacity my first year there. We've always gotten along well and I genuinely like her.

But, there's a twist. She was paid MANY THOUSANDS of dollars a year more than I'm paid to do the job, and she worked fewer hours. I carried enormous resentment about that for a long time--not toward her, toward my employer. And, it gets better. My employer recently told me that he had a conversation with her (it's bad enough to do this, but just plain stupid to tell me) where he offered her my job when we leave (we're still shooting for a return to the mainland early next year) at "a good salary," part-time hours and a willingness to pay her (only) child's (very expensive) private school tuition. I was thinking about this earlier this morning...when I noticed that my left ear seemed a bit plugged. Hmmm, coincidence? I think not!

I'm a firm believer that many physical symptoms are barometers of our emotional condition. So what, I ask myself, am I unwilling to hear about this situation? Or is it that he's (my employer) unwilling to hear me? It doesn't help matters that both he and his partner have told me (separately) that with each hire in the position, they feel they've gotten a better person in the job. They've both told me that I perform the job better than all of my predecessors. Yet my salary (and benefits) don't reflect that. The person I'm most angry at, of course, is myself--for staying in that shitty, underpaid job where I continue to be underappreciated. Partly it's because I'm lazy and hate looking for work; partly it's because after four years in this small place, I'm pretty aware of what's out there and there's not a lot to choose from; and partly because it seems like a lot of wasted effort to job-hunt for a position that would only last a few months. But I feel a real anger toward him for not only being willing to compensate her a tremendous amount more than me, but for insulting me by telling me he plans to do just that...again. And he did that right on the heels of asking for our commitment to stay on-island until the end of the year to allow him to take care of some personal business without having to worry about his office being in new hands (this was before he got the bright idea to throw a lot of cash at my predecessor to lure her back). And that's how MY loyalty was rewarded.

So today I say to myself: Hell, yeah! I hear you now! Loud and clear! Now it's up to me to do something with that anger. Time for me to TAKE ACTION instead of REacting to someone else's foolish behavior. Because he's not worth the time and energy to build up a major resentment over this.

posted by Marilyn @ 6:50 AM