Why do we get angry?

This is an excerpt from Naradapurana. It is absolutely lovely and so meaningful.

One possesses a body because of his actions

Body binds him to desires

Desires entrap him into greed

Greed enslaves him to anger

Anger destroys his virtues

Loss of virtues destructs the mind

A destructed mind commits sin.

Gita also preaches the same and it is the truth. I especially found the correlation with anger so easy to understand. If and when you get angry, spend 5 minutes trying to analyze why you got angry and you can trace it to a desire of yours that was not fulfilled. If you didn’t have a desire in the first place, you would never get angry. We get angry with our family because we expect from them. We get angry with drivers on the road because we expect them to be good drivers.

The first step towards reducing anger in your life is to absolve yourself from desires. As a normal human being, it’s hard to completely free yourself from desires but the less you have them, the more peaceful your life is. You would think that when you’ve done your duties you’ve the right to have desires/expectations from this world. Your desires/expectations will give you nothing but pain. My answer to you is – trust in God. He’s right there for you, looking at you. You will get what you deserve. If you’ve done what you were required to do, you will get what is good for you. Many a times, we say “Life is not fair”. It can only be said in jest because God is fair.