July 11, 2006
Rage
The news media and some internetters have been carrying on lately about a new psychiatric condition. It’s called Intermittent Rage Disorder. They`re very excited. How excited? Somebody was so excited, they simply threw literary taste and caution to the winds and wrote, “In other words, it’s all the rage.”
Makes me wonder what with a name like that [it’s kin to Latin’s rabies] and with rage and disorder all on the same line, has it been included in the DSM, the owner’s manual shrinks use to order the disorders and help keep track of place, direction, and billing hours? And also whether there might be such a thing as a mittent rage, one that goes on all the time.
I have a mildly mittent rage, myself. I’ve found that, like the tango, it usually takes two to rage, a cause and an effect, to go all the way. We’re hardly ever without some cause these days surrounded by 24/7 cable reports reminding us of one geopolitically or ecclesiastically stupid thing after another, any one of which can make for good raging.
Sleep, of course, is an opportunity for intermittent rage. Sleep, and maybe when one is in church kneeling at the Mysteries. It’s not as easy to blow one’s stack while kneeling, especially with the cross in view. But with the opportunities for rage starting up again as soon as those recesses of sleep and prayer are over, to what else can a person expect to look forward?
Some compensation might be that instead of looking forward all the time, one might try looking backward once in a while. One way to do that is to take up some sort of habit of studying spiritual genealogy. The Bible’s a good place to start. If you don’t have one, check in to a motel and borrow one of Gideon’s. Try remembering that we are grains of sand who got started with Abraham whom God told that his progeny would be as the grains of sand or the stars in the heavens [cf Gen 22.17 et al]. Frankly, I tried being sand once and found being a star much to be preferred. But take your choice, it’ll get your mind off things temporarily and maybe spread out your mittents. Another way, of course, is to open a window and throw literary taste and caution to the winds.