Thursday, December 01, 2005

ANGER MANAGEMENT AND A FEW NOTES ON FRIENDSHIP

Taking It Out On The Irons

Yesterday had another quibble with someone who used to be a very good friend,who I really hate now. I was told by this person I had anger issues and needed to go for deliverance or anger management. Obviously if not indirectly insulting/dissing me (as has before) knowing I was already upset already. Instead of figuring out why I was always getting upset with 'it' and make amends, 'it' decided that perhaps I should cut 'it' off instead of always getting angry. 'It' had a point because I was always getting upset with 'it' all the time, but to get to such a conclusion, obviously 'it' did not value the friendship enough to want to end it so dexterously and unequivocally. Thus an irreparable harm has been done and so as of yesterday this friend has been axed due to the irreconcilable differences. Yeah, I can hear someone say, I have heard this before. This time it is for real, I have been playing 'Super-friend' for too long, always being the one initiating reconciliation because I'm told it's a sign of maturity. Bull- freaking- dung, it just give people more opportunity to walk all over you and take you for granted some more, but now I know better. Stretching out a hand of friendship is tough enough, why complicate life and the relationship building process by grabbing on when it's not genuinely welcomed. As my friend Singto put it, it's like the the cream you are using is giving you cancer, but you say if I stop buying it the company would feel bad for losing me as a customer. ROCKS!!! They don't give a flying frog about you that's why their product is killing you in the first place. So I'll end this part of this rant by saying Your loss.

Anyways, after that awful episode, I was pretty upset (I can be very emotional and gentle hearted person, even though I appear rough, tough and crude most of the time). I agree that when I do get angry, it's like I am on some high. Since I don't know how to fight, the only way I can exert that anger is through words and yes those words, when they do come out, can be very hurtful. I try to suppress them, but that only makes me more and more angry that all I can do is probably go and cry somewhere. But on yesterday I decided to take it out on the irons at the gym.

The last time I was at the gym was in March. Did that for like 2 weeks, mostly yoga. I am not much of a working out person any more. I was once upon a life time, back in secondary school. I think I would have kept it up but for those awful two years in Charlotte. That was when the damage was done, I lost every ounce of fitness. When I got to Chapel Hill, I walked on to the track team, but who was I fooling, I was finished in that department. I had to walk back out after about 3 weeks or a month or unsuccessfully posing as a track team member. I laugh really hard when I think about that. But I tried to continue going to the gym though. Once in a while I would show up and lift like 2 of those 30 pound dumbbells and on the rowing machine thingy I could lift like 80 pounds. But today...hmh.... Today.. Revealed a very sad sight. I could only comfortably lift but 15 pounds. SHAME Addy!!!

SO since I could not lift much to exert my anger, and I could not really work up any sweat with the 15 minutes I spent on the treadmill doing 5 mph, I decided to do it the old school way. Like I used to do when I was bored in the village during those very long August breaks, especially the one following the June 12 Riots (Oso Abiola). I asked them to find me 'Skipping Rope'.

Kai!!! I hadn't skipped-rope in a hot minute o. It was quite relaxing doing it and I worked up a bit of sweat too. If I do this for like 30 minutes everyday and take up yoga again, it should help relieve me of some of the stresses from work and my so-called anger issues. May be I'll get fit again and get some strength and energy to dash out bitch-slaps and kick butts when next I'm angered, instead of being such a whinny-pouty baby.

Meanwhile I am learning a lot about friends and friendship. People come into your life at certain times to serve a purpose in your destiny and vis-a-vis, one perhaps unknown to us. Once that purpose is served some stay and continue their purpose and others become the vestige of your life. I would hope that I have served a purpose in the lives of people for whom I have become the relics of acquaintance. Perhaps we should begin to ponder,if we haven't already, on what purpose our friends and the people we meet are meant to serve in our lives and us in theirs.

Below are a few quotes on friendship that I found a while back that explain what a friend and friendship is. May be something will inspire you to cherish your friends, especially the ones who stick with you through thick and thin, when you are both good and bad. (To my true friends who know themselves, much love)

"Friends are born, not made." * Henry Adams

"Forsake not an old friend, for a new one does not compare with him." * Apocrypha -- Ecclesiasticus 9:10

"My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake. "* Aristotle

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. * Aristotle

This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half. * Francis Bacon

Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another. * Eustace Budgell

Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves. * Albert Camus

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing. * Albert Camus

Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship--never. * Charles Caleb Colton

What a wretched lot of old shriveled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind--the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship. * George Eliot

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. * Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. * Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only way to have a friend is to be one. * Ralph Waldo Emerson

Real friendship is shown in times of trouble; prosperity is full of friends. * Euripides

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did. * F. Scott Fitzgerald

No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy. * Thomas Fuller

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you. * Elbert Hubbard

My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, you've had a great life. * Lee Iacocca

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire. * François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship. * François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

The most deadly fruit is borne by the hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship. * Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it. * W. Somerset Maugham

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits. * W. Somerset Maugham

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I. * Michel de Montaigne

Love demands infinitely less than friendship. * George Jean Nathan

Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it--to that end a slight physical antipathy must probably help. * Friedrich Nietzsche

Hold a true friend with both your hands. * Nigerian Proverb

To me, fair friend, you never can be old For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. * William Shakespeare

Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love. * William Shakespeare

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right. * Mark Twain
friendshipip is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce. * Voltaire

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. * Oscar Wilde

"There are no such things as strangers, only friends we haven't met yet." -- Anonymous"

Odd how much it hurts when a friend moves away - and leaves behind only silence." -- Pam Brown

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can by trying to get other people interested in you." -- Dale Carnegie

"You can hardly make a friend in a year, but you can easily offend one in an hour." -- Chinese Proverb

"It is the friends that you can call at 4 A.M. that matter." -- Marlene Dietrich

"In times of prosperity friends will be plenty; in time of adversity not one in twenty." -- English Proverb

"My best friend is the one that brings out the best in me." -- Henry Ford

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." -- E. M. Forster

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." -- Anais Nin

"God save me from my friends - I can protect myself from my enemies." -- Proverb

"Lifwithoutgt a friend is death without a witness." -- Spanish Proverb

"We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend" -- Robert Lewis Stevenson

"The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Friends are God's way of apologizing to us for our families." -- Unknown

"No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow."-- Alice Walker

"Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth." -- Horace Walpole

"A friend is one who knows all about you and likes you anyway." -- Christi Mary Warner

"A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself." -- Frances Ward Weller

To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed ~ That can make life a garden."-Goethe

"Silence is the true friend that never betrays.Confuciusus

"Love is blind, but friendship closes its eyes."-unknown

"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine."-Thomas Jefferson

"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow ~ Don't walk behind me, I may not lead ~ Just walk beside me and be my friend."-unknown

"An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship."-Spanish Proverb

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My favorite quote about friends
"Old friends are the best antiques"
I used to cherish this quote a while ago but how true is this?

I think we have friends for different reasons and different seasons. Sometimes time, distance, relationships and much more are factors that lead to change of friendship. Dynamics change and so do interests and orientations.

All I can say to you is cherish those times with those friends. Even when you are no longer as chummy as you were, say a little prayer for your friends once in a while. They were there for you once upon a time.

Anonymous said...

skipping rope is th ebest way to get rid of stress and lose wwight. one thing i've learned about friendships is to let them go when on eparty is putting in more work than the other. it's painful. i'm always the on clinging on, and then suddenly it hits me, 'na wa. this person no like me.'

Anonymous said...

Oh! my gosh I so feel you. I'm always the peacemaker but last week I fashied and guess what, it worked lol so it does help to hold out on ur friends sometimes... Yoga.. yah I remember those days lol! SUp mamsita

Anonymous said...

May I just say, it is so cute that you quote me so much! I mean, ok, it's not LOTS, but it makes me feel good to see my name that often in your blogs :). Makes it seem worthwhile that I spend so much time telling all my other friends about what a wonderful person you are!