Heritage

I was sittin here thinkin. Man, my old man was an angry SOB sometimes. Come to think of it, so was my grandfather. What I've heard of my Great Grandfather, he was a pretty nasty and mean SOB himself. Me? I'm just a kind mellow compassionate guy. . . riiiiight. My anger seethes just below the surface just waiting for the slightest provocation and justification to release itself all over you or anyone else that PISSES ME OFF. I see bloggers calling themselves "the angry this" or "the angry that" and I just laugh [except for you "Angry Black Lady"]. Most of you light weights wouldn't know anger if it bit you in the ass.

Anger is an old condition passed down through the generations. See, we tend to be crafty craftsmen in my family. We work hard, support our families by doing work that takes a certain degree of skills and talent. We also tend to be perfectionists that do a better than average job at the work we do. Too bad for us that such occupations don't pay a whole hell of a lot. Oh, we never starve or go hungry and we're never homeless in the worst of times, but we don't tend to accumulate much excess resources, and it's not always just because of pay scales. That's all well and good except the problem comes along when we step back and take a look at other people who are making a whole fucking bunch more money than we are. They don't seem to be any smarter and don't seem to work any harder. They seem to have all the human frailties that we have. So, WTF? The anger begins to grow. We begin to feel like the whole world is unfair. We blame all our problems on other people. . . usually the pricks who make more money than us, do less work and are trying to stick it to us day and night.
It's called a "working class chip." It weighs a couple tons. It oppresses us, it keeps us down and it turns us into angry pricks just like we accuse those rich fucks of being. I've got it, my father had it, his father had it, his father had it and I suspect it goes on a few generation back from there. If you could take the past six or seven generations of my fathers and line us all up, it would be hard to tell us apart.

Now, I consider myself lucky. I've done a lot of conscious work at getting over that anger and hateful attitude toward 'those who have.' My son has turned his working class chip back on itself. He was alway a brilliant academic and is now a bright young social activist who has dedicated his life to making life better for the working class ("kicking ass for the working class"). My equally intelligent daughter is likewise an advocate for those less fortunate than most. Education CAN be a beautiful thing.

Sadly, I look at others in my family and they are just as angry mean and nasty as past generations. As angry as I've been in my life, I consider myself VERY lucky to have had the ability to look within myself and uncover the demons and monsters that have pulled me around like a bull with a ring through his nose. I don't regularly succumb to those forces anymore and my life is much better because of it.

So, is my family any different from others? Probably not. If you're a guy who grows up to be a test pilot, you probably come from a long line of calm, meticulous, brave and academically sharp people. Look at and get to know a man and you could probably identify his ancestors in a crowd.

So back to this angry man who lives inside of me. So many times I told myself to just "get over it." So many people told me to just stop such bad behavior. How many times did people look at me and say "what the fuck is the matter with you?"

"Just get over it." Such simple words. Such an easy concept. So fucking difficult to do. In the end, very few people "just get over it." I wish I could "just get over it."

Do you have things that you should "just get over?" When was the last time you thought that someone ought to "just get over it." When was the last time you heard someone say "just get over it" or "they ought to just get over it?"

Words are so easy.